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 01 November 2025. | News & Events 27 April 2025.



Featured for November 2025


Featured

DSS41 Island Lagoon, some time after the conversion to S-Band configuration.

The Baker-Nunn Camera building is on the upper right.

The photo (5MB high res version here) was used on the station’s final Christmas card in 1972. A Duplicate negative was preserved by Hamish Lindsay.

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


 
Featured interviews:
Featured

Interview with Honeysuckle Creek’s Bryan Sullivan – in the Interview section. Hear Bryan’s moving description of the trip home after the Moonwalk.

Also see Bryan’s bio page – with links to other pages of photos and stories.


Featured

Interview with The Goddard Space Flight Center’s Dick Nafzger – responsible for the ground support of all Apollo television – in the Interview section.

Learn about the Scan Converters, debates about taking TV to the Moon, spending time in Sydney, OTC Paddington, repairing the scan converter, the Apollo 11 television transmission and much more. Fascinating.


 
Anniversaries:

featured featured featured

Apollo 12: Second manned lunar landing, 15–25 November 1969.

Hear:
The electifying launch of Apollo,
the “amazing, fantastic” lunar landing,
and Pete Conrad spot Surveyor from the lunar surface,
all recorded at Honeysuckle Creek.


The Apollo 11 crew and their wives in Sydney, Saturday 1st November 1969. (Footage courtesy of Stephen Slater.) More on their visit here.



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.


Site Menu

Updates | News| Previously featured items

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
,
MSFN Technical Information Bulletins

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, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

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


Featured

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


Honeysuckle featured photo
Honeysuckle featured photo

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.


Honeysuckle in 1971

Neil Armstrong on the footpad – as seen at Honeysuckle Creek

Honeysuckle Creek:
a beautiful setting

Website by Colin Mackellar – photo taken 09 October 1971.


Prime Minister Gorton’s statement
Prime Minister Gorton’s statement

Australian Prime Minister John Gorton visits Honeysuckle Creek on the day of the Moon Landing, Monday 21 July 1969. Silent film runs for 4'02" – a 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.

The Honeysuckle antenna today

Honeysuckle featured photoThe 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.




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