This recording of the Apollo 17 descent and lunar landing was made at Honeysuckle Creek and was preserved by Alan Foster.

Goldstone was tracking, and so this was recorded from the Net 1 feed.

It begins as Challenger is at 57,000 feet.

Apollo 17 lunar landing – 11.8MB mp3

Touchdown is 10'40" into the recording.

The audio quality on this recording is quite good. Ron Evans in the orbiting Command Module is not heard on this circuit from Goldstone, whereas Cernan and Schmitt – and Houston – can hear him. The Capcom is Gordon Fullerton.

(This is an updated transfer by Colin Mackellar from one of Alan Foster’s tapes. Alan had two copies of this on one of his tapes – this is the better version.)

At 21:41 GET, there was a comms outage from Houston incoming to Honeysuckle.

Telemetry Supervisor Laurie Turner goes up to the spacecraft on Net 1 to let them know of the difficulty.

Gene Cernan replies, and after comms is restored, CAPCOM Bob Overmyer resumes communication.

Honeysuckle speaks with Apollo 17 – from 21:41:25 GET – 1.9MB mp3.

With thanks to Ben Feist at ApolloinRealTime.org for finding the clip!

Here’s audio of the Voice of America’s coverage of launch of Apollo 17, as recorded in Sydney by Colin Mackellar from HF radio (hence the poor quality).

The Voice of America’s Rhett Turner anchored the coverage.

NASA PAO Chuck Hollingshead is the Voice of Apollo Launch Control.

t-10:29 up until cutoff (at t-00:30.) – 4.2MB mp3

Near the start, Rhett Turner speaks about the last minute checks going on round the Manned Space Flight Network.

The recording ends shortly after the cutoff which occurred 30 seconds before launch, when the Automatic Sequence detected a problem.

t-6:02 to t+5:00 – 4.1MB mp3

This is the re-started countdown and launch.

(At some points, I had a better source of the audio – possibly ABC Radio – and switched to that.)