Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of possibly the most historic event ever - the landing of Eagle, the Lunar lander of the Apollo 11 mission, on the Moon. Naturally, we tried to get to as many of the events leading up to this as possible. Canberra has many links to the Apollo missions. There were 3 NASA tracking stations in the valleys just west of Canberra, at Tidbinbilla, Orroral Valley and Honeysuckle Creek. The TV coverage of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the Lunar surface came from Honeysuckle!!! "The Dish" at Parkes took over later on. One of the things that I did last week was to see the huge Moon globe suspended above a display and lecture room at Questacon, our national science and technology centre. You can walk around the globe and see it from several floors and it has all the features that the many Lunar missions have mapped. Another very special thing was to actually touch a tiny piece of the Moon. NASA has lent Geoscience Australia a tiny slice of polished rock collected by the Apollo 17 mission. It is the only piece in the southern hemisphere than can be touched, the other samples are too scientifically precious. Maybe I am the first small bear to touch a bit of the Moon. I have held meteorites, which also are from space, but to touch the Moon is a real high.
Labels: Canberra, space
# posted by Bart Bear @ 3:32 pm
