Goldstone Polaroid

Sunday 20th July 1969 PDT / Monday 21st July 1969 AEST

This scan of a Polaroid taken at Goldstone is one of only two we’ve seen from that site.

Like the Honeysuckle photos, the scan lines can be slearly seen.

(Sadly, the international TV audience did not see any video from Goldstone after the switch to Parkes was made by Houston TV.)

Bill Wood, lead USB engineer at Goldstone, writes,

“During Apollo 11, Goddard Space Flight Center had a public relations person assigned to us. He was given a small office trailer to use just outside the operations building. It had a Fairchild Slow Scan monitor rack that was equipped with a Polaroid camera that used a 4 by 5 inch sheet film back.”

This is one of two known surviving Polaroid images of the slow-scan TV picture as received at Goldstone. Click here for a gamma-corrected version (to compensate for the TV camera’s gamma setting of 1.0) Scans by Bill Wood.

Back to the Apollo 11 TV section.