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Our Clever Country

The Parkes Radio Telescope

Giant leaps in space

Australia shows the world the first steps on the Moon.

What’s the problem?

Space exploration hit a peak when the Apollo 11 spacecraft flew to the Moon and Neil Armstrong made his famous “small step” speech. The mission was run by the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). A non-stop communication link with Apollo 11 could not be made from NASA’s Goldstone station in California.

A great Aussie solution

The Parkes Radio Telescope

Photograph by John Sarkissian (CSIRO, Parkes Observatory)

When the signal from Apollo 11 could not be picked up at the California base, two Australian facilities communicated with the spacecraft and relayed the information to Mission Control at Houston. These facilities were the Parkes Observatory, 25 kilometres north of the town of Parkes, and the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station near Canberra.

On 21 July 1969, the television images of the moonwalk were transmitted through Honeysuckle Creek for the first eight minutes and then through Parkes. Australian TV viewers saw the images 300 milliseconds before the rest of the world.

How does it work?

Radio waves bring TV and radio into our homes, and in a similar way spacecraft send out signals that are detected on Earth. Instructions can also be sent back to the spacecraft. An antenna can follow the position of a spacecraft (tracking) by pointing in the direction where the signal is strongest.

The future

The Honeysuckle antenna can now be found at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, Tidbinbilla, which is home to the largest steerable antenna in the Southern Hemisphere. The Complex is a NASA facility and is used to track spacecraft as they explore the far reaches of the Solar System.

The Parkes Observatory is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility that studies objects in the universe through radio astronomy research.

Further info, facts and fun

• An Australian-made movie, The Dish, is based on the role that the Parkes Observatory played during the moon landing.
• Paul Scully-Power and Andy Thomas are two Australians who have become astronauts.

For more info on Australia’s involvement in space exploration, check out:

Parkes Observatory http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/
The Dish movie http://thedishmovie.warnerbros.com
Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex http://www.cdscc.nasa.gov/
Andy Thomas http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/thomas-a.html
Paul Scully-Power http://www.odysseytelevision.com/live/interactive/moonshot/biography-p aulscully-power.html

For more info on great Australian Science check out:

CSIRO’s Australia Advances http://www.csiro.au/promos/ozadvances
The Australian Academy of Science’s Nova http://www.science.org.au/nova
The Australian Science Archive Project http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/

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