Australijskie stacje odbiorcze zapewniały 50 lat temu bezpośredni przekaz z KsiężycaA Wind Storm in Australia Nearly Interrupted the Moon Landing BroadcastBy Dan Falk smithsonian.com July 9, 2019
NASA Mission Control during the Apollo 11 moonwalk, with the live broadcast from the lunar surface on the screen. (NASA)Fifty years ago this month, 650 million people—one-fifth of the world’s population at the time—gathered in front of their televisions to watch Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon. Though celebrated as an American achievement, those TV images would never have reached the world’s living rooms without the help of a crack team of Australian scientists and engineers, working in the bush a few hundred miles west of Sydney.
The Apollo lunar module had a transmitter for sending back not only TV images but also crucial telemetry, radio communications and the astronaut’s biomedical data—but receiving those signals was no simple matter. The transmitter had a power output of just 20 watts, about the same as a refrigerator light bulb, and picking up that signal from the moon a quarter of a million miles away required huge, dish-shaped antennas. Moreover, as the Earth turns, the moon is only above the horizon for half the day at any one receiving station.
So NASA relied on ground stations on three different continents, located at Goldstone, in California’s Mojave desert, in central Spain, and in southeastern Australia. To this day, these radio stations make up the Deep Space Network, allowing NASA to monitor all parts of the sky for communications at all times. (...)
The Parkes 64-meter radio telescope at the observatory in Parkes, New South Whales, Australia. The dish was used to receive video and communications from the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969. (Dan Falk)Goldstone was picking up the signal, but they had trouble as well: Technical problems resulted in a harsh, high-contrast image; and, worse than that, the image was initially upside down. The TV camera on the lunar lander was intentionally mounted upside down to make it easier for the astronauts to grab in their bulky suits; a technician at Goldstone apparently forgot to flip the switch that would invert the image. (...)
“I reckon that’s one of the most important switches in history,” says Glen Nagel, an outreach officer at the CDSCC, pointing to a toggle-switch attached to a small circuit board. It’s displayed in a glass cabinet alongside a Hasselblad medium-format camera and other artifacts associated with the Apollo missions. “Without that switch, all of us would have had to have stood on our heads to watch man walk on the moon—or turn our television sets upside down.” (...)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/wind-storm-australia-almost-interrupted-apollo-11-moon-landing-broadcast-180972581/Space Communications and Navigation: Exploration Enabled, Then and NowJuly 1, 2019
(...) When Armstrong finally started descending the Lunar Module ladder three hours after the Eagle had landed at Tranquility Base, a 64-meter antenna in Goldstone, California received the first downlink, and two-way communication from the surface of the Moon.
Deep Space Station-14 (DSS-14) located at Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (GDSCC) Credits: Goldstone Deep Space Communications ComplexHowever, by the time Armstrong reached the foot of the ladder, Mission Control in Houston, Texas switched the transmission to Honeysuckle Creek’s 26-meter antenna located outside of Canberra, Australia. The improvement in picture quality was extraordinary.
Parkes Observatory located in Parkes, New South Wales, Australia Credits: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)But, responsibility for voice communications remained at Goldstone.
These iconic words in history, “That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind” ended their 240,000-mile journey to Earth at one location, while the pictures of Neil Armstrong speaking them came to be seen through another.
After almost nine minutes into the broadcast, a 64-meter dish at Parkes Observatory located in Parkes, New South Wales, Australia provided an even better picture. Television transmission would continue through July 23, 1969. (...)
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/apollo50The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Apollo ConnectionJuly 16, 2019 Written by Jane Platt, Matthew Segal Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
(...) The Apollo program needed full-time communications support, and JPL had its own missions, so DSN engineers helped design and operate a "parallel network." After the Apollo program ended, the DSN inherited the equipment. Since then, the DSN has kept the legacy alive by providing communications for a very long roll call of missions — for NASA and other space agencies. Managed by JPL, the DSN will play a central role in NASA's Artemis lunar explorations and the agency's plans for astronauts to one day go beyond the Moon to Mars. (...)
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/the-jet-propulsion-laboratorys-apollo-connection