Jun
17
Filed Under Places and Events
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NASA’s Network Officer, Ernie Randall, during the Apollo 11 TV transmission
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The Parkes Observatory, home to a 64 meter Radio Telescope which was made famous for its part in the 1969 moon walk, is located about 20km north of Parkes on the Newell Highway. It is a major part of CSIRO’s Australian Telescope National Facility (ANTF) and although it began service in 1961, it is still at the forefront of astronomical discovery and science due to regular upgrades.
The Telescope was featured in the 2000 Australian film, The Dish. The movie tells the story of how Parkes Observatory was used to relay live video of the first steps on the moon during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission. NASA used Parkes extensively throughout the Apollo 11 project to receive signals in the southern hemisphere along with NASA’s Honeysuckle Creek tracking station near Canberra.
| It was one giant leap for mankind, taken at 12:56pm AEST on 21st of July 1969 with 600 million people watching. Three tracking stations were receiving the broadcast simultaneously, Parkes, Honeysuckle Creek near Canberra and NASA’s Goldstone in California. During the first few minutes of the broadcast, NASA alternated between the signals from its two tracking stations at Honeysuckle Creek and Goldstone searching for the best quality images. When they switched to Parkes, the pictures where such a superior quality that NASA remained with the Parkes TV pictures for the remainder of the 2 and a half hour telecast. However, it may not have been the case. When the astronauts landed on the moon at 6:19am AEST it was still some 7 hours before the moon would be high enough to be seen by Parkes. The plan was for the astronauts to rest before the moon walk however Neil Armstrong decided to go ahead immediately. It seemed like the moon walk would be finished before the moon |
was high enough for Parkes to receive any signals. However it took the astronauts so long to fit their space suits and depressurise the lunar lander that the moon was now beginning to rise at Parkes. While fully tipped over, waiting for the moon to rise, the Parkes dish was hit by 110khr wind gusts causing the control room to shudder and threatening the structural integrity of the whole telescope. Fortunately the operators remained cool and the winds eased. When Buzz Aldrin activated the TV camera the moon was just beginning to rise and the signals were indeed received by the Parkes dish. The weather remained bad at Parkes and the dish was subjected to high winds and was operating well outside its safety limits. Even so, the images from Parkes were of such a high quality that they were used by NASA for the whole moonwalk. |
| On Eagles Wings: The story of Parkes Apollo 11 support . Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, June 2001. |
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With a diameter of 64 meters, the Parkes facility is the largest single dish telescope used for astronomy in the southern hemisphere. Although the telescope is mainly used for astronomical discoveries it has also been used for tracking and receiving data from many space missions. The most notable is of course the Apollo 11 mission however the Parkes facility also played a key role in the Galileo space probe to Jupiter and various Mars missions in early 2004.
The observatory operates 24 hours a day, every day of the year. The visitor centre, which is virtually built in the shadow of the 64 meter dish, offers great views and heaps of information about the telescope, its current and past projects and astronomy in general. Visit Parkes Radio Telescope.
Due to the sensitivity of the dish, it is ideal for detecting pulsars, which are rapidly spinning neutrons about the size of small cities. Of the 1800 known pulsars, about two thirds were discovered using this telescope; including the only known binary pulsar system. The dish can observe frequencies between 0.3 to 43 gigahertz. One current project is the Pulsar Timing Array, which may detect gravitational waves from colliding super massive black holes. The 13 multi-beam receiver, designed and built by CSIRO’s ANTF for the Parkes dish in 1997, is a revolutionary instrument that provides unprecedented efficiency for large scale radio surveys of the sky. Recent surveys by the Parkes dish have found 2500 new galaxies in our local region.
CSIRO, Parkes Radio Telescope |
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While in the area I just had to stop in at Parkes and check it out. I was a big fan of the movie, The Dish, and as a kid I loved anything to with space and space exploration. I still find it fascinating that the quiet town of Parkes and this amazing telescope played such a vital role in viewing the first steps on the moon in 1969.
Hutch @ AZ
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