During Apollo 11, Station Admin Officer Bernard Scrivener recorded key parts of the mission as they were heard at Honeysuckle.
These recordings were passed to Mike Dinn and the audio was digitised by Colin Mackellar.
(The files here replace the lower bitrate audio files that were here previously.)
Windows users: right click on each link, Macintosh users: control click and “Save As”...
The
Descent and Landing 63 min 15 sec / 14.5MB
– Starting at about 5:48am Monday
21st July 1969 (Eastern Australian Time). |
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This segment begins with Bernard Scrivener announcing the content. The mission audio starts just before AOS on the Command Module on lunar revolution 14 – (102:14:58 GET) and runs right through until 32 minutes after the landing. It’s unedited – so there are plenty of gaps where there is no speech. The landing is at 30 minutes 50 seconds into this recording. To follow the events, you might find it helpful to use this page from the excellent Apollo Lunar Surface Journal edited by Eric M. Jones. |
This recording is of Net 1 (i.e. the Air / Ground loop).
At the time of the landing, Goldstone and Madrid were tracking, and Goldstone was almost certainly the source of the audio. While there’s nothing particularly unique about this recording, it is generally clearer than the PAO-released audio and does not have any PAO (Public Affairs Office) commentary.
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The tape segment starts just as Neil Armstrong deploys the MESA as he is at the top of the ladder (109:21:18GET). The First Step is 3 minutes into this recording. This segment ends as Buzz Aldrin partially closes the hatch as he begins his descent on the ladder (109:41:28GET). To follow the events, you might find it helpful to use this
page from the Apollo
Lunar Surface Journal edited by Eric M. Jones.
Did Neil Armstrong actually say the “a” in “one small step for a man”? Recent media reports (on some analysis by Peter Shann Ford) suggest it has been proven that he did, though a closer look at the Honeysuckle recording does not seem to support that conclusion. Hopefully, further independent research will shed light on the question. See the labelled waveform of the Honeysuckle recording below (corrected from an earlier version). Click here to listen to that segment – as recorded from Net 1 at Honeysuckle. Click here to listen to that segment, but with the “small step for [a] man” slowed down to 25%. Although earlier I was persuaded that there was room for the ‘a’, sadly, I am now not convinced. When the slowed-down recording is heard, the ‘for’ seems to run right up to ‘man’, leaving little or no room for an ‘a’. (Bill Wood, who was a Unified S-band Lead Engineer at Goldstone during Apollo, suggests that Neil’s vox circuitry may have cut off the ‘a’ at this point. Vox problems certainly were apparent later in the EVA with Buzz’s microphone, and some of Neil’s words are clipped at the start. However, there doesn’t seem to be any room between ‘for’ and ‘mankind’ for that to have happened at this point.) With or without the ‘a’, Neil’s words remain among the
most memorable and appropriate ever spoken – even if it is necessary
to supply the ‘a’ from context (which everyone does).
On this diagram, the expected position of the “a”, if it was spoken, is marked with [a]. |
As with the previous recording, Goldstone was the source of the audio on Net 1 at this point.
The handover from Goldstone to Honeysuckle Creek
took place not long after the astronauts re-entered the Lunar Module. i.e.
Voice communications with the LM was via Goldstone for the entire EVA, but
TV came from Goldstone, Honeysuckle and Parkes.