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Viking 1 successfully touched down at Chryse Planitia on the Red Planet fifty years ago this month – on 20 July 1976.

The previous month, as the spacecraft closed in on Mars, Angel Ioannou took this photo of Tony Salvage at Honeysuckle’s Ops Console.

See the Project Viking section, including a new PDF version of Hamish Lindsay’s Viking essay by Glen Nagle.

Image from the 2026 Honeysuckle and NASA Networks (completely unofficial) Calendar on my personal website.

A 6 minute video of Ed von Renouard’s recollections of the day of the Apollo 11 Moonwalk. On the Honeysuckle video console, he was the first to see the television arriving from the Moon. Watch above, or on Vimeo.

Or listen to the full interview recorded in 2009.

In the Interviews section.

Honeysuckle’s Kevin Gallegos remembers being in “the hot seat” during the Apollo 11 Moonwalk.

Wonderful interview. In the Interviews section.

Here is a message from Apollo 11 Capcom Bruce McCandless to the Australian space trackers, for the 40th anniversary, July 2009.

13 July 1965. “One of T. O’Connor’s huts going into Honeysuckle.”

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| Previously featured items

The Big Picture

Hamish Lindsay’s essays

Honeysuckle Creek

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

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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 commemorated 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 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.

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.