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A Tribute to the men and women of
Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, Canberra, Australia

the wider Australian involvement
in manned and unmanned space exploration, and more.

Updated 18 October 2017. | News 25 May 2017.

Featured, October 2017

A new photo of the Honeysuckle team after Apollo 11.

“I was tremendously impressed by the quality of the technical people here, and their eagerness. … The Honeysuckle Creek site is in by far the most beautiful location. In the mountains, the foothills of the Australian Alps, with green vegetation. Hard to take.”

– One of the key MSFN and Unified S-Band architects, Howard Kyle, visited Honeysuckle Creek in April 1969. Read his impressions on the Visitors page. See the above photo on this page.

The 70 metre dish of DSS-43 at Tidbinbilla points far to the south on Wednesday 27th September 2017. It was tracking Voyager 2, now 155.7 AU from Earth, with a Round Trip Light Time of 32 hours and 4 minutes.

CDSCC is now the only DSN station capable of communicating with Voyager 2, due to the spacecraft’s southerly trajectory.

New Voyager 2 essay coming soon!

What really happened with the Apollo 11 TV signal. More here.

Previous featured items.

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Honeysuckle Creek

Intro
Early Days (Location, Construction, Opening)
The Station (Technical description, photos)
People, Stories. (+ Visitors, Reunions, etc.)

Apollo Missions
MSFN, MCC-H, Preparing for Apollo, Goddard Sims, SRTs, Apollo Summary, Apollo 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 11 TV, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, ALSEP, Skylab, leaving MSFN.

Deep Space Missions

Last Days HSK Today
The Books The DVDs.

Interviews

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.

Missions Supported by Other Stations
Mercury: Friendship 7.
Gemini: GT3, GT4, GT5, GT12.
Mariner IV, Ranger, Lunar Orbiter, Surveyor, Pioneer, Viking, Voyager.

Department of Supply
Pioneers, WRESAT, Woomera.

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


A beautiful setting Website by Colin Mackellar – photo taken 09 October 1971.	Honeysuckle and Apollo 11 The Apollo 11 Mission. Apollo 11 TV. Search for the tapes.

Apollo 11 40th The Apollo 11 40th anniversary celebrations in July 2009.	The Honeysuckle Creek DVDs Including Ed von Renouard’s Apollo 11 Super 8 movie – and the full Restored Apollo 11 EVA.


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.
Both clips courtesy of the ABC. See more of the Prime Minister’s visit here.

One Small Step: The Australian Story

Watch “One Small Step: The Australian Story”, produced by Freehand TV in Sydney for the BBC, for the 40th anniversary in 2009.
This is a unique account of Australia’s role, and features key players from Honeysuckle Creek, Tidbinbilla and Parkes. Recommended. On YouTube.

(If you’ve seen the Australian comedy “The Dish”,
watch this to discover what actually happened.)

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.