This month marks the 60th anniversary of the Opening of Tidbinbilla Tracking Station (Deep Space Instrumentation Facility– DSIF42) by Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies, on 19th March 1965.

Left: Frames from Department of Supply footage (see below).
Right: Cover of the Opening Day booklet.

Image from the 2025 Honeysuckle and NASA Networks (completely unofficial) Calendar on my personal website.

Video: Keith Aldworth and Mike Dinn in Conversation.

Keith and Mike recall the Surveyor Program which they both supported at Tidbinbilla.

With the current unmanned lunar landings, remember Sunset at Surveyor 3 in 1967 – via DSS42 Tidbinbilla.

Honeysuckle Creek Opening – 58th annniversary – 17 March 1967.

60th Anniversary of Gemini 3, the first manned Gemini flight, 24 March 1965. Photo: Gus Grissom (Command Pilot) and John Young (Pilot).

See Hamish Lindsay’s essay and hear audio recorded at Carnarvon.

56th Anniversary of Apollo 9, the first manned test of the Lunar Module, 03–13 March 1969.

In this 2017 interview, John Saxon speaks about his space tracking career. Watch on Vimeo.

See the full collection of featured items at this link.

Also see some related (and some unrelated!) video at vimeo.com/honeysuckle.

Some of them are collected here.

Updates | News

Honeysuckle Creek

Intro
Early Days (Location, Construction, Early scenes, Opening)
The Station (Technical descriptions, photos)
Honeysuckle People, Stories. (incl. Visitors, StaDirs, Reunions, and more.)

Apollo Missions

The Manned Space Flight Network,
Mission Control Center - Houston,

Preparing for Apollo, Goddard Sims, Station Readiness Tests,

Apollo Summary,

Apollo 1, Apollo 7, Apollo 8, Apollo 9, Apollo 10, Apollo 11, Apollo 11 TV, Apollo 12, Apollo 13, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16, Apollo 17, ALSEP, Skylab,

Leaving the MSFN.

Deep Space Missions

Last Days Honeysuckle Today The Books

Videos

Interviews

Space People

Other

Other Stations
Tidbinbilla, Goldstone, Madrid, Carnarvon, Guam, Ascension Island, ARIA, Deakin Switch, Parkes, Muchea, Red Lake, Island Lagoon, Orroral Valley, Cooby Creek, Carnarvon OTC, OTC (Aust), BFEC, Santiago, Darwin, Texas (Corpus Christi), MILA.

Missions Supported by Other Stations
Mercury: Friendship 7, Faith 7.
Gemini: Gemini 3, Gemini 4, Gemini 5, Gemini 12.
Mariner IV, Ranger, Lunar Orbiter, Surveyor, Pioneer, Viking, Voyager.

Department of Supply
Pioneers, WRESAT, Woomera.

About / Contact
Tips on navigating the site
Links

A message from Christopher Kraft, 14 March 1974, on the occasion of Honeysuckle leaving the Manned Space Flight Network.

Honeysuckle Creek
The story of Tom Reid, a little dish, and Neil Armstrong’s First Step – by Andrew Tink, 2019.

Click for more about the book.

In 2019, the Royal Australian Mint Moon Landing Coins commemorate the Moon landing.

Click for more about the coins.

Australian Prime Minister John Gorton visits Honeysuckle Creek on the day of the Moon Landing, Monday 21 July 1969. Silent film (14MB MPEG4 file).

The Prime Minister after his tour inside Honeysuckle’s Operations building. Unedited news film runs for 5'14". A 21MB MPEG4 file.

The Honeysuckle antenna today

The old Honeysuckle antenna was used for its last official track in January 2010.

DSS46 photos.

And here’s a tribute page of photos on the occasion of the shutdown.