Pioneers


This section is dedicated to some of the pioneers of Australia’s role in space tracking.

In this section:

Lloyd Bott updated

Bob Leslie

Ian Homewood (planned)

Tom Lawrence (planned)

Langley, April 3 1959

This photo might be the earliest record of US Australian space tracking co-operation.

A high level meeting at Langley Research Center in Virginia in April 1959.

Left to right: George Graves Jr (Langley), George Barlow (Australian Department of Supply), Tom Lawrence (Weapons Research Establishment, Salisbury, South Australia) and Hartley Soule’ (Langley). April 3rd 1959.

From George Barlow via June Lawrence, scanned by Mike Dinn.

Click image for a larger version. Or see a detail from the photo here.


Mike Dinn writes –

“It’s worth bearing in mind that Australia’s role in Space Tracking would not have come about, or continued, without the smart efforts of many people.

People like Tom Lawrence, Lloyd Bott, Ian Homewood, and Bob Leslie from the Apollo era spring to mind, but there were many others.

One of the most impressive achievements of Apollo, in my opinion, was the marshalling of many thousands of individuals, organisations and countries into a single focussed team, of which we – operators, administrators etc – were equal partners.
It was a collective effort.”