Moon Telecast Direct To Aust.

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32035, 9 July 1969, Page 17

Moon Telecast Direct To Aust.

(N.Z. Press Association-Copyright) SYDNEY, July 8. A major change in the Apollo 11 moonlanding programme has guaranteed Australians the world’s clearest television pictures of the historic event.

The telecast of the landing will now be beamed direct from the moon to Australia, instead of to the United States. “This means that the commander of the mission. Mr Neil Armstrong, will not be emerging from the lunar module until the moon is over Australia,” Dr E. G. Bowen, chief of the C.5.1.R.0.’s division of radio astronomy, said today. The original plans called for Mr Armstrong’s fellowastronaut, Colonel Edwin Aldrin, to beam back “live" pictures of the landing to the National Aeronautics and Space Agency station at Goldstone, California, but the signals now will be beamed direct to the C.5.1.R.0. radio

telescope at Parkes, 230 miles west of Sydney. The signals will then be fed directly into the communications network linking Honeysuckle Creek, Tidbindilla, near Canberra, and the Overseas Telecommunications Commission terminal at Paddington. Sydney. From Paddington they will be relayed “live” to Sydney television stations, and beamed by satellite to the remainder of the world. The NA..S.A. has up-graded the Parkes telescope to the role of the main earth station after allocating the astronauts a seven-hour rest period between the time the lunar module settles on the moon and when Mr Armstrong steps on to the surface.