Category Archives: Moon
Not one but two Aussie dishes were used to get the TV signals back from the Apollo 11 moonwalk
NASA
The role Australia played in relaying the first television images of astronaut Neil Armstrong’s historic walk on the Moon 50 years ago this July features in the popular movie The Dish.
But that only tells part of the story (with some fictionalisation as well).
What really happened is just as dramatic as the movie, and needed two Australian dishes. Australia actually played host to more NASA tracking stations than any other country outside the United States.
Read more:
How big is the Moon? Let me compare …
Right place, right time
Our geographical location was ideal as US spacecraft would pass over Australia during their first orbit, soon after launch. Tracking facilities in Australia could confirm and refine their orbits at the earliest possible opportunity for the mission teams.
To maintain continuous coverage of spacecraft in space as the Earth turned, NASA required a network of at least three tracking stations, spaced 120 degrees apart in longitude. Since the first was established in the US at Goldstone, California, Australia was in exactly the right longitude for another tracking station. The third station was near Madrid in Spain.
Australia’s world-leading place in radio astronomy was another factor, having played a key role in founding the science after the second world war. Consequently, Australian engineers and scientists developed great expertise in designing and building sensitive radio receivers and antennas.
While these were great at discovering pulsars and other stars, they also excelled at tracking spacecraft. When the CSIRO Parkes radio telescope opened in 1961 it was the most advanced and sensitive dish in the world. It became the model for NASA’s large tracking antennas.
CSIRO, Author provided
The Commonwealth Rocket Range at Woomera, South Australia, also allowed Australians to gain experience in tracking missiles and other advanced systems.
The dish you need is at Honeysuckle Creek
NASA invested a considerable amount in its Australian tracking facilities, all staffed and operated by Australians under a nation-to-nation treaty signed in February 1960.
For human spaceflight, the main tracking station was at Honeysuckle Creek, near Canberra. Its 26-metre dish was designed as NASA’s prime antenna in Australia for supporting astronauts on the Moon.
Hamish Lindsay, Author provided
NASA’s nearby Deep Space Network station at Tidbinbilla also had a 26-metre antenna but with a more sensitive radio receiver. It was called on to act as a wing station to Honeysuckle Creek, enhancing its capabilities, and ultimately tracked the orbiting command module during Apollo 11.
Over in Western Australia, Carnarvon’s smaller 9-metre antenna was used to track the Apollo spacecraft when initially in Earth orbit, as well as to receive signals from the lunar surface experiments.
To augment the receiving capabilities of these stations, the 64-metre Parkes radio telescope was asked to support Apollo 11 while astronauts were on the lunar surface. The observatory’s director, John Bolton, was prepared to accept a one-line contract:
The Radiophysics Division would agree to support the Apollo 11 mission.
The original plan
The decision to broadcast the first moonwalk was almost an afterthought.
Originally, the tracking stations were to receive only voice communications and spacecraft and biomedical telemetry. What mattered most to mission control was the vital telemetry on the status of the astronauts and the lunar module systems.
Since Parkes was an astronomical telescope, it could only receive the signals, not transmit. It was regarded as a support station to Honeysuckle Creek, which was also tasked with receiving the signals from the lunar module, Eagle.
When the decision was made to broadcast the moonwalk, Parkes came into its own. The large collecting area of its dish provided extra gain in signal strength, making it ideal for receiving a weak TV signal transmitted 384,000km from the Moon, using the same power output as two LED lights today.
One giant leap
On Monday, July 21 1969, at 6.17am (AEST), astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the Eagle lunar module on the Sea of Tranquillity.
It occurred during the coverage period of the Goldstone station, while the Moon was still almost seven hours from rising in Australia.
The flight plan had the astronauts sleeping for six hours before preparing to exit the lunar module. Parkes was all set to become the prime receiving station for the TV broadcast.
This changed when Armstrong exercised his option for an immediate walk – five hours before the Moon was to rise at Parkes. With this change of plan, it seemed the moonwalk would be over before the Moon even rose in Australia.
But as the hours passed, it became evident that the process of donning the spacesuits took much more time than anticipated. The astronauts were being deliberately careful in their preparations. They also had some difficulty in depressurising the cabin of the lunar module.
Meanwhile, moonrise was creeping closer in Australia. Staff at Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes began to hope they might get to track the moonwalk after all – at least as a backup to Goldstone in the US.
Bad weather hits
The weather at Parkes on the day of the landing was miserable. It was a typical July winter’s day – grey overcast skies with rain and high winds. During the flight to the Moon and the days in lunar orbit, the weather at Parkes had been perfect, but this day, of all days, a violent squall hit the telescope.
CSIRO/David Cooke, Author provided
Still, the giant dish of the Parkes radio telescope was fully tipped down to its 30-degree elevation limit (the telescope’s horizon is 30 degrees above the true horizon), waiting for the Moon to rise in the north-east.
As the Moon slowly crept up to the telescope’s horizon, dust was seen racing across the country from the south. The dish, being fully tipped over, was at its most vulnerable, acting like a huge sail.
The winds picked up and two sharp gusts exceeding 110km/h struck the large surface, slamming it back against the zenith angle drive pinions that controlled the telescope’s up and down motion. The control tower shuddered and swayed from this battering, creating concern in all present.
The atmosphere in the control room was tense, with the wind alarm ringing and the 1,000-ton telescope ominously rumbling overhead.
Parkes had two radio receivers installed in the focus cabin of the telescope. The main receiver was on the focus position and a second, less sensitive receiver was offset a very short distance away, which gave it a view just below the main receiver.
Fortunately, as the winds abated, the Moon rose into the field-of-view of the telescope’s offset receiver, just as Aldrin activated the TV at 12.54pm (AEST). It was a remarkable piece of timing.
CSIRO/David Cooke, Author provided
The 64m antenna at Goldstone, the 26m antenna at Honeysuckle Creek and the 64m dish at Parkes all received the signal simultaneously.
At first, NASA switched between the signals from Goldstone and Honeysuckle Creek, searching for the best-quality TV picture.
After finding Goldstone’s image initially upside down and then of poor quality, Houston selected Honeysuckle’s incoming signal as the one used to broadcast Armstrong’s “one giant leap” to the world.
Eight minutes into the broadcast, at 1.02pm (AEST), the Moon finally rose high enough to be received by Parkes’ main, on-focus receiver. The TV quality improved, so Houston switched to Parkes and stayed with it for the remainder of the two-and-a-half hours of the moonwalk, never switching away.
Honeysuckle continued to concentrate on their main task of communications with the astronauts and receiving that vital telemetry data.
CSIRO/David Cooke, Author provided
Throughout the moonwalk, the weather remained bad at Parkes. The telescope operated well outside safety limits for the entire duration. It even hailed toward the end, but there was no degradation in the TV signal.
It’s hailing on the dish.
CSIRO, Author provided321 KB (download)
CSIRO, Author provided321 KB (download)
The moonwalk lasted a total of 2 hours, 31 minutes and 40 seconds, from the time the Eagle’s hatch opened to the time the hatch closed.
Australians saw it first
In Australia, the Apollo 11 feed was split. One feed was sent to NASA mission control for broadcast around the world. The other went directly to the ABC’s Gore Hill studios, in Sydney, for distribution to Australian TV networks.
As a result Australians watched the moonwalk, and Armstrong’s first step through Honeysuckle, just 300 milliseconds before the rest of the world.
Read more:
We need to protect the heritage of the Apollo missions
An estimated 600 million people, one-sixth of the world’s population at the time, watched the historic Apollo 11 moonwalk live on TV. At the time it was the greatest television audience in history. As a proportion of the world’s population, it has not been exceeded since.
The success of the Apollo 11 mission was due to the combined effort, dedication and professionalism of hundreds of thousands of people in the United States and around the planet.
Australians from Canberra to Parkes, remote Western Australia to central Sydney played a critical role in helping broadcast that historic moment to an awestruck world.
Parkes gives NASA the best TV pictures yet.
NASA/CSIRO, Author provided267 KB (download)
NASA/CSIRO, Author provided267 KB (download)
NASA
You can hear more about the Moon landing in our special podcast series, To the Moon and beyond.
John Sarkissian, Operations Scientist, CSIRO
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
We need to protect the heritage of the Apollo missions
NASA
Alice Gorman, Flinders University
It’s 50 years since the two Apollo 11 astronauts – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin – spent 22 hours collecting samples, deploying experiments and sometimes just playing in the Sea of Tranquillity on the Moon.
In doing so, they created an archaeological site unique in human history.
Now, with what’s been called the New Space Race and plans to return to the Moon, the Apollo 11 and other lunar sites are under threat. We need to protect this heritage for future generations.
Read more:
How big is the Moon? Let me compare …
Apollo 11’s archaeological site
The archaeological site of Tranquillity Base consists of the hardware left behind, as well as the marks made in the lunar surface by the astronauts and instruments.
NASA
The hardware component includes the landing module, the famous flag (no longer standing), experiment packages, cameras, antennas, commemorative objects, space boots and many other discarded objects – more than 106 in total.
Around these objects are the first human footprints on the Moon as well as the tracks the astronauts made walking around, and the places where they dug out samples of rock and dust to take back to Earth for scientific analysis.
The artefacts, traces and the landscape constitute an archaeological site. The relationships between them can be used by archaeologists to study human behaviour in this environment so different to Earth, with one-sixth terrestrial gravity and no atmosphere.
Assessing the heritage value
Not only this, but the site has heritage value for people on Earth. To assess this, we can look at a number of categories of cultural significance. Those in the Burra Charter are widely used across the world for heritage assessment.
Historic: There is no doubt that, as the first place where humans set foot on another celestial body, this is a very important place in global history. It also represents the ideologies of the Cold War (1947-1992) between the US and the USSR.
NASA
Scientific: What can we learn from the site? More particularly, what questions would we no longer be able to answer if Tranquillity Base was damaged or destroyed?
This is not just about archaeological research into human behaviour on the Moon. Apollo 11 has been exposed to the harsh lunar environment for 50 years. The surfaces of the hardware are accidental experiments in themseves: they carry the record of 50 years of micrometeorite and cosmic ray bombardment. Finding out how well the materials have survived can also provide information about how to design future missions.
Aesthetic: This type of cultural significance is about how we experience a place. While we can’t assess it in person, there are films and photographs that give us a feeling for the place. This includes the light, shadows and colours of the lunar surface from the perspective of the human senses. The aesthetic qualities have inspired many artists and musicians, including astronaut Alan Bean who devoted his post-Apollo 12 life to painting the Moon.
NASA
Social: This is about the value that contemporary communities place on the site. For the 600 million-plus people who watched the television broadcast of the landing, it was a life-changing moment representing the ingenuity of human technology and visions of a space-age future.
But the mission did not mean the same for everyone. Some African-Americans protested against Apollo 11, seeing it as a waste of resources when there was such great economic and social disparity between white and black communities in the US. For them, it was a sign of human failure rather than a triumph.
The larger the community that has an interest in a heritage place, the higher its level of social significance. It could be argued that Apollo 11 has outstanding universal significance, like places on the World Heritage List (unfortunately the World Heritage Convention cannot be applied to space).
What are the threats?
In the past few years we have seen an increase in proposed missions to return to the Moon. Some have stated their intention to revisit the Apollo sites, by human crew or robot – and this could lead to the removal of material, for souvenirs or science.
But the sites are both fragile and unprotected. The two primary risks to their survival are uncontrolled looting, and damage from abrasive and sticky lunar dust.
NASA
Removing material from the sites damages the integrity of the artefacts and the relationships between them. A casual visit could erase the original footprints and astronaut traverses. The corrosive dust disturbed by surface activities could wear away the materials.
Dust was a problem for all the crewed lunar missions. Apollo 16 commander John Young said: “Dust is the number one concern in returning to the Moon.”
The dust can be stirred up by plumes from landing or ascending vehicles, driving vehicles, walking on the surface, or, in the next phase of lunar settlement, by construction and industrial activities, such as mining.
Attempts at protection
The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 forbids making territorial claims in space. Applying any national heritage legislation to a place on the Moon could be interpreted as a territorial claim.
The US states of California and New Mexico have placed the Apollo 11 artefacts left on the Moon on a heritage list. They can do this because, under the treaty, the US legally owns the artefacts. But this does not protect the site itself.
NASA
NASA has established a set of heritage guidelines for its sites on the Moon. The guidelines propose buffer zones around these areas, inside which no-one should enter. They make recommendations for approaching the sites to minimise dust disturbance.
In May 2019, a bill called the One Small Step to Protect Human Heritage in Space Act was introduced to the US Congress. Its purpose is:
To require any Federal agency that issues licences to conduct activities in outer space to include in the requirements for such licences an agreement relating to the preservation and protection of the Apollo 11 landing site, and for other purposes.
But the bill applies only to Apollo 11 and does not have similar requirements for the five other Apollo landing sites. It also applies only to US missions. It’s a step in the right direction, but there is still much more to be done.
NASA
Only in the last decade has the idea of space archaeology gained legitimacy. Until recently, there was no urgency to establish an international framework to manage the cultural values of lunar heritage.
Read more:
Why the Moon is such a cratered place
Now we’re in a new situation. On Earth, it’s common for industrial or urban activities that disturb the environment to be subject to an environmental impact assessment, which includes heritage.
Even when there are no laws to force companies to pay attention to heritage, many consider it important to seek a Social Licence to Operate – support from stakeholder communities to continue their activities.
Everyone on Earth is a stakeholder in the heritage of the Moon. Fifty years from now, what will remain of the Apollo 11 and other sites? What new meanings will people draw from it?
Alice Gorman, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
50 years ago: Australia and the Apollo 8 mission that sent a Christmas message from the Moon
Apollo 8: Launch countdown …
NASA387 KB (download)
NASA387 KB (download)
It was on December 21, 1968, that Apollo 8 launched from Cape Kennedy, in Florida, sending US astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell Jr and William Anders on the world’s first human mission to the Moon.
NASA
A few days later – on Christmas Eve Houston time, Christmas Day in Canberra – the three astronauts had just passed over the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon and were approaching a lunar sunrise when they sent back a historic Christmas message to the people of Earth.
Read more:
Curious Kids: Why can I sometimes see the Moon in the daytime?
A few hours later, an Australian tracking station took over as prime data and relay receiving site for the mission.
Located among the gum trees and kangaroos just outside Canberra, Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station listened for the crucial acquisition of signal as the spacecraft emerged from behind the Moon on its final orbit, having fired its engine to return to Earth.
Hamish Lindsay, Author provided
Honeysuckle Creek received and retransmitted astronaut Jim Lovell’s first words to Mission Control on their way back home:
Apollo 8: ‘Santa Claus’
NASA268 KB (download)
NASA268 KB (download)
Houston, Apollo 8, over. Please be informed there is a Santa Claus.
Apollo 8: the mission that ‘saved 1968’
The Apollo 8 mission was just the second crewed outing for the type of spacecraft that would ferry astronauts to the first lunar landing the following year.
Initially the mission was to test the lunar module in the safety of Earth orbit. But with that spacecraft still not ready, NASA took the bold decision to launch a command and service module around the Moon by itself as a precursor to a crewed landing.
NASA
Also spurring the decision was the belief that the Russians were close to launching their own Moon shot.
Apollo 8 was the first manned launch of a massive Saturn V rocket, the first rendezvous with the Moon, and the first time human eyes saw the far side of the Moon.
The six-day mission was a spectacular success. The three astronauts completed ten orbits of the Moon and the spacecraft and ground support were thoroughly tested.
NASA was now one step closer to that “giant leap for mankind”.
NASA
The astronauts also took the now iconic “Earthrise” photograph of the Earth behind a lunar landscape. This was a profound image, containing all of humanity, bar the three astronauts.
Read more:
Earthrise, a photo that changed the world
Although the religious nature of Apollo 8’s Christmas Bible reading caused some controversy after the mission, it was heard by hundreds of millions of people.
That the message was transmitted from further than humans had ever been – the distance led to a delay of one second into all communications – made it all the more remarkable.
One member of the public famously wrote to NASA to credit the mission with having “saved 1968”, a year otherwise plagued by war and protests over Vietnam, civil rights and other issues.
Supporting Apollo down under
The Apollo program that enabled the first humans to leave Earth’s orbit was overwhelmingly an American endeavour, but not exclusively so.
At a time before dedicated spacecraft communication satellites, NASA relied on a chain of tracking and data relay stations around the world to communicate with Earth-orbiting satellites and astronauts. To ensure adequate coverage, these included stations in far off places such as Madagascar, Nigeria and Woomera in South Australia.
For missions further into the solar system, NASA used three principal stations: one near Canberra in Australia which included Honeysuckle Creek, another at Madrid in Spain, and the third at Goldstone in California.
At least one of these three stations would have a dish that would face the spacecraft at any given time, receiving their communications and passing them to Mission Control in Houston, Texas.
Hamish Lindsay, Author provided
This was a global network of instantaneous data and voice communications, at a time when even a single international telephone call had to be booked weeks in advance and was extremely expensive.
For Apollo 8, Honeysuckle Creek received telemetry and voice communications when the spacecraft first went into orbit behind the Moon, when it first emerged back into communication with Earth, and when it began its fiery re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere on December 27.
Australian technicians were responsible for the vital task of aligning the dishes with the spacecraft and troubleshooting any problems that might arise with the equipment, a not unlikely occurrence with 1960s technology.
National Archives of Australia (A1500, K20417), CC BY
Support for other missions
While only Lovell would fly again, on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, all the equipment and procedures tested on Apollo 8 – the spacecraft, the NASA technicians and the global network of tracking stations – would support the remaining Apollo flights.
Honeysuckle Creek was shut down and dismantled in 1981 but its receiving dishes moved not far away to Tidbinbilla.
Read more:
Australia’s part in 50 years of space exploration with NASA
Australia continues to play an important role in space exploration with scientists and technicians still supporting support NASA.
They are involved as part of the Deep Space Network, tracking spacecraft such as the New Horizon’s mission to Pluto and multiple missions to Mars.
As for the two Voyager spacecraft, which have travelled the furthest of any object made by humans, they now only have contact with Earth via Australia.
Even on Christmas Day, Tidbinbilla will be receiving messages from spacecraft around the Solar System.
So when you send a Christmas message this year, spare a thought for those messages from the Moon 50 years ago, and the role Australian scientists played in receiving them.
Tristan Moss, Lecturer, UNSW
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Article: Neil Armstrong Has Died
The link below is to an article dealing with the death of Neil Armstrong, first man to set foot on the moon back in 1969.
For more visit:
http://www.neatorama.com/2012/08/25/RIP-Neil-Armstrong/
Article: Nuclear Attack on the Moon
The following link is to an article concerning a once planned nuclear launch on the moon.
For more visit:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/10/the-united-states-once-planned-on-nuking-the-moon/
Author
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History for Today 
