For almost a year, the world's been a bit “lunaticus” - that is, “moonstruck”. Canberra too, and more than rightly so given its connection with some of the most significant events in the history of humankind's race to reach the stars.
In case it somehow escaped your orbit, July 20/21, 2019, marked the 50th anniversary of the history-altering moment when Neil Armstrong took one small step into a desolate landscape where man is the alien.
As he did, at the foot of the ominously-named Deadman's Hill, in the deep south of the Australian Capital Territory, a 26m (85ft) antenna beamed footage from hundreds of thousands of kilometres in space, enabling it to be seen around this globe.
Nine months later, that same tracking station would provide critical assistance in the near-tragic events involving Apollo 13 when an explosion occurred on board - on April 13, 1970.
When it comes to the moon landing, although the part played by a similar piece of technology in a central-west NSW paddock - otherwise known as "The Dish - gets most of the attention, the now abandoned Tracking Station at the geographic heart of the ACT, Honeysuckle Creek (HSK), deserves its share of the limelight.
According to Mike Dinn, Deputy Director of the Canberra facility when the “Eagle” landed and during subsequent Apollo missions, it’s only fair the record is righted more broadly.
“That movie, “The Dish”, while 60% to 70% correct, does give a false impression of what happened,” he says.
“I was there, one of only a handful left [from HSK], and I know what happened. There’s more to it than what much of the Parkes-centric reporting suggests.”
When a marshmallowy, bulbous-headed spaceman climbed down a short ladder before gingerly stepping where none had before, uttering what would become perhaps the most well-known phrase ever, the world watched on with collectively-held breath. Those eminently recognisable first minutes, seen by an estimated fifth of this planet’s population, came from HSK. (Russia and China, as America’s greatest rivals in the space race, refused to allow their citizens to see it).
Only as Commander Armstrong ventured further into the Sea of Tranquility (Mare Tranquillitatis) - one of numerous pockmarks that define the lunar surface and named because early astronomers mistook the dark patches for water - did the broadcast switch to images received by Parkes.
Some 300kms further north, by that time the moon had moved into a position to allow the larger Parkes receiver to access the TV signal. Due to their higher quality, Mission Control in Houston used these for the remainder of the almost three hour broadcast. (The only copy of that footage outside the US is in the permanent collection of the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra - a gift from NASA to the CSIRO for Australia’s contribution).
After the switch, HSK continued to communicate with and oversee the telemetry (data) of the astronauts and their craft, as they’d done since first receiving the signals from 11.15am, July 21 (AEST).
“We were the relay - from the astronauts to Houston and back in the other direction as well,” explains Mike.
“Parkes is not a tracking station, it’s a receiving antenna, and so it couldn’t process any of the data or provide for communications.”
Along with being in charge of operations at HSK, Mike was also responsible for co-ordinating the activities at Parkes.
“That meant getting the best signal from the best source and shipping it out to Houston, all in real time.”
Another role was monitoring the physical condition of the spacemen. This included analysing the much-elevated heart rate (112bpm) of the most famous man in the universe at that juncture.
“My other priority was the safety of the astronauts,” says Mike.
“Worrying about the biomedical data coming down when we had some slight problems, that’s where my prime worry was.”
Set just inside the Namadgi National Park, sheltered by the Brindabellas, for 14 years HSK tracked and supported manned space flights as part of the USA’s Apollo program. It was one of three built for NASA’s Deep Space Network.
Equidistant around the planet to allow for constant monitoring of space-bound craft, the first, Goldstone (1958), is set in a “radio-quiet” basin in the Mojave Desert, California. Named for a nearby gold-mining ghost town, it’s now a US National Historic Landmark. The other is located just outside Madrid, Spain.
While officially opened on March 17, 1967, HSK had been involved in simulation tests for the launch of Apollo 1, expected to be the first manned mission for the US. The morning after the January 27 conclusion of the testing, Australia received news of the fire in the module that took the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee.
The 1968 launch of Apollo 8 was humans truly venturing forth into the unknown - the first time we had left planet earth - and looked back upon it in its entirety. It was perhaps the most dangerous of all, with no real clue about what might possibly occur so far from home.
The very first descriptions of the moon as seen from orbit where received and transmitted to Houston through Honeysuckle Creek. Heard as part of the Manned Space Flight Network rather than the public “Voice of Apollo”, those well acquainted with these matters suggest “they are probably the ‘most authentic’ surviving recordings of the communications between Houston and the spacecraft on the historic first voyage.”
Two years before, Mike Dinn had relocated to Canberra.
With his very English accent revealing his origins, Mike moved to the capital in 1966. Trained as an electrical engineer in London, his first mission was Surveyor - America’s first extraterrestrial space probe and the uncrewed lunar landing used to gather information for the men who’d follow.
A transfer to HSK mid-1967 required the acquisition of a new set of skills.
“Adding humans into the act and getting involved with voice and biomedical and those things uniquely related to man-flight, that took a little bit of experience.”
Technologically though, Mike doesn’t believe they were at a disadvantage.
“It’s easy to say you have more power in your watch today than we had at the station, and in some contexts that’s true.”
“That was the era of analogue equipment - lots of knobs, switches, dials and meters - all of which needed to be operated by people.”
“The fact that the technology was relatively old in terms of computers today, is somewhat meaningless. We got the product out, as needed, and the flexibility of people was paramount.”
Never was this more apparent than during the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission - its 50th anniversary on Monday, April 13, 2020 (also a Monday in 1970).
After the explosion of an onboard oxygen tank two days into the mission, Houston received the now famous relay that there was a problem. Most know the story thanks to Tom Hanks' and Ed Harris' star turns in the now 25-year-old movie, but few would be aware of the role Australian stations had to play.
Central to this, HSK provided a “lifeline to the moon”.
Originally, HSK and Tidbinbilla - also at Canberra - and their 125 staff worked jointly with a NASA team responsible for the "tracking and communications systems for the mission". They were also to be "the only earth stations tracking" for the lift-off of the lunar module, Aquarius, as it rejoined the command ship, Odyssey, scheduled for April 17.
Instead, as the drama unfolded, with many of Apollo 13's systems crippled, utilising "two antennas, four transmitters, eight receivers and a computer telemetry complex", HSK tracked the near-disabled spacecraft. Even more importantly, in the face of seriously weakened signals, they were able to acquire critical data.
During almost a month of intense training, staff had run multiple simulations, attempting to "think of all the possible things that could go wrong and how they would handle the problems".
While the event was not initially broadcast given launches had already become somewhat "routine", from more than 320,000kms below, the world quickly tuned-in with as much trepidation as that over the journey of 11.
"Slingshotted" around the moon, Apollo 13 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean four days later; incredibly, James Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert were unharmed.
The US Government gave official thanks for the international assistance in “saving the lives of our astronauts.” HSK, Tidbinbilla, Parkes and Carnarvon in Western Australia were singled out.
Now in his 80s but with his recollections as sharp as if it was yesterday, Mike acknowledges the role of a variety of people and sources for all operations, including the moon landing. This extended to the “switching station” at Deakin, and microwave radio links in the Canberra suburb of Red Hill and the rural NSW hamlet of Williamsdale (its tower is still to be found atop Mt Gibraltar).
“Over the years, I’ve tried to keep a balance between the roles of the facilities,” he says.
“The calibrating, diagnosing of problems, testing,was all done by people - as part of a large team. An array of people and places all doing their job, and with that, bringing it to a worldwide audience.”
A continually updated website and a couple of books have helped bolster the ACT station’s reputation, the most recent, a 2018 one by politician turned author, Andrew Tink, particularly highlighting the momentous events of 1969.
In Andrew’s view, one of the reasons HSK didn’t receive earlier recognition for its role at that time, is that most of the staff there “had no idea that they had transmitted the live TV of Armstrong’s first step.”
It wasn’t until 1989 that the Director of the time, Tom Reid - a man who didn’t like fuss - spoke more broadly about it.
“Tom, who passed away in 2013, had an almost pathological aversion to talking about it,” says Andrew. “It was about having a job to do, and they just got on and did it”.
The capital can also make other claims to fame in the exploration of that most remote of frontiers.
The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at Tidbinbilla, in a south-west valley between the Murrumbidgee and Paddys Rivers, was built four years before the moon landing. When it occurred, Tidbinbilla maintained communications with Michael Collins in the orbiting command module as he anxiously awaited the return of Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
Another of Mike’s peeves is how often its role and that of the module pilot is overlooked.
“Even President Nixon forgot him!” he exclaims.
“I was on the desk at the time when Houston asked me to confirm the uplinking of President Nixon and he says ‘hi Neil and Buzz’ and not a word about Mike.”
Collins though, was “very aware of Australia’s contribution at the time of Apollo 11.”
In an exclusive interview with The Australian, Collins thanked those who worked to make it such a success, including Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes. Former employees such as Mike Dinn received a short video message from NASA’s Gene Kranz, again thanking them for their contribution.
While Tidbinbilla was modelled on the earlier Parkes design, in 1987, its 64m (210ft) antenna was extended by six metres, making it the largest movable dish in the Southern Hemisphere.
The last-remaining NASA tracking station of seven in Australia, the Complex also became home to HSK’s telescope following its 1981 decommissioning. It continued to be used to monitor spacecraft closer to earth until retired in 2009. The following year, the HSK dish was declared an Historical Aerospace Site by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
The Orroral Valley Tracking Station, operational in late 1965, was deeper south - and even more remote.
Its construction by Queanbeyan builder and renowned sportsman, Tommy O’Connor (he even bowled Bradman for a duck) - also responsible for the HSK facility - required serious commitment. Getting everything into the remote location was feat enough in itself.
Orroral employed a 26m antenna along with a variety of smaller ones, to track closer-range, earth-orbiting satellites. This included Australia’s first in 1967. Within a decade, it was the largest such station (staff-wise) outside the US.
Having provided support for the first Space Shuttle missions, in 1985 the dish was removed to the Mount Pleasant Radio Observatory in Tasmania.
As for the much older Mt Stromlo (1911), it looked to the heavens rather than tracked man-made objects in them.
Its initial specialisation was solar and atmospheric observations. After WWII, the focus turned to some of the great unknowns: “the structure and evolution of planets, stars and galaxies, the origin and development of the Universe, and the physics of the tenuous material between.”
With the destruction of its telescopes in the 2003 Canberra firestorm, its capabilities are gradually being regenerated.
Also reduced to a shadow of its former glory, Orroral was razed to concrete footings in 1992. So too, Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station. The name of the thoroughfare leading to its former site - Apollo Road - is one of the few remnants to reveal the once significance of the isolated destination at its end.
The sense of aloneness that envelopes you when visiting though, may well be the most fitting emulation of that planetary body with which it was so involved.
And there’s always that very special footage, for which mankind will be forever grateful.
SOURCES:
- Tink, Andrew. Honeysuckle Creek, The Story of Tom Reid, A Little Dish and Neil Armstrong's First Step. Newsouth, 2018.
- https://www.honeysucklecreek.net/
- Trove
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