What's wrong with this caption?

[ToSeek]

(Click on image for larger version.)

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." At 10:56 pm EDT on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the Moon. This image was taken from the telecast of the event, watched by people around the world. The pictures were taken by the Apollo lunar surface camera, the black bar running through the center of the picture is an anomaly in the Goldstone ground data system.
(NASA photo ID S69-42583)

- http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary.../apollo11.html

[Glom]

Isn't that shot of Aldrin?

[Bob B.]

Wasn't the image first received in Australia, not Goldstone?

[Glom]

I've always been a bit confused by who received what. According to The Dish Parkes received everything, but I've read elsewhere the Goldstone did a bit of receiving as well.

[Andrew]

Is the black bar part of the LM structure and not an anomaly?

[AGN Fuel]

I've always been a bit confused by who received what. According to The Dish Parkes received everything, but I've read elsewhere the Goldstone did a bit of receiving as well.

Goldstone was of course an integral part of the MSFN, but the initial pictures actually came through Honeysuckle Creek, near Canberra.

http://www.pcug.org.au/~mdinn/TheDish/

As an occasional poster here, I am sure that Mike can fill in all the details!

(Incidentally, Mike very kindly loaned me a copy of the Hamish Lindsay book that he writes about on his site. It is quite outstanding - very, very highly recommended if you want to know the nuts & bolts about the tracking operations.)

[JayUtah]

Armstrong spent several seconds standing on the footpad before stepping sideways onto the lunar surface. Here Armstrong has not yet dropped down from the bottom ladder run onto the footpad. The "visual" that would properly synch up with Armstrong's transmission is rather unremarkable.

[AGN Fuel]

Is the black bar part of the LM structure and not an anomaly?

The image is a still of the TV broadcast and I believe the black bar is an artifact of that rather than part of the LM.

[ToSeek]

Armstrong spent several seconds standing on the footpad before stepping sideways onto the lunar surface. Here Armstrong has not yet dropped down from the bottom ladder run onto the footpad. The "visual" that would properly synch up with Armstrong's transmission is rather unremarkable.

That was my issue: not only is Armstrong not stepping onto the moon in this image, he's not even about to - he's stepping onto the LM's footpad, is going to jump up again to see if he can make it, then step out onto the Moon.

I've seen documentaries re-sync the audio so that "One small step..." is heard at about the time they're showing this image, which is bad enough, but to have a NASA site seem to make the same error is truly annoying.

[ToSeek]

I've always been a bit confused by who received what. According to The Dish Parkes received everything, but I've read elsewhere the Goldstone did a bit of receiving as well.

Goldstone was of course an integral part of the MSFN, but the initial pictures actually came through Honeysuckle Creek, near Canberra.

http://www.pcug.org.au/~mdinn/TheDish/

As an occasional poster here, I am sure that Mike can fill in all the details!

(Incidentally, Mike very kindly loaned me a copy of the Hamish Lindsay book that he writes about on his site. It is quite outstanding - very, very highly recommended if you want to know the nuts & bolts about the tracking operations.)

According to the Hamish Lindsay book, they switched back and forth a few times between Goldstone and Honeysuckle Creek before settling on the latter for the video while staying with Goldstone for the audio. Parkes became available about six minutes later with a much better image that was used for the rest of the moonwalk.

Note that it's still possible that the image above was recorded at Goldstone (which would still have been receiving the images).

(Incidentally, two of my former coworkers at Goddard - now retired - are quoted by Hamish Lindsay in the book. )

[AGN Fuel]

Note that it's still possible that the image above was recorded at Goldstone (which would still have been receiving the images).

Very good point.

(Incidentally, two of my former coworkers at Goddard - now retired - are quoted by Hamish Lindsay in the book. )

How did you find the book?

[ToSeek]

(Incidentally, two of my former coworkers at Goddard - now retired - are quoted by Hamish Lindsay in the book. )

How did you find the book?

I ordered it from Amazon.

If you're asking what I thought of it, here's what I wrote for Amazon, giving it 3 stars out of 5:

I was looking forward to this one and was somewhat disappointed. It's a straightforward telling of the history of manned space flight, exceeding Chaikin's From the Earth to the Moon in only a few respects, specifically the coverage of Skylab and in its behind-the-scenes addressing of the ground system and tracking station issues associated with each mission.

There are some unnerving inaccuracies, though, the most glaring of which is misquoting some of Grissom's last words before the Apollo 1 fire. (He said, "How can we get a man to the moon when we can't even talk between two buildings?" not "How do you expect to get us to the Moon if you people can't even hook us up with a ground station?" As always, the glitches seem minor but reduce confidence in everything else.

On the other hand, the book is copiously illustrated with diagrams and color pictures, which are interspersed with the text rather than, as is usually the case, confined to their own separate section.

I was also pleased to see quotes from two of my former coworkers at Goddard, Bob Stanley and Robert Burns, in a section talking about setting up the tracking stations for Apollo, an effort they were closely involved with.

[AGN Fuel]

Note that it's still possible that the image above was recorded at Goldstone (which would still have been receiving the images).

Very good point.

(Incidentally, two of my former coworkers at Goddard - now retired - are quoted by Hamish Lindsay in the book. )

How did you find the book?

[ToSeek]

Is there an echo in here?

[AGN Fuel]

Is there an echo in here?

Wow. That's bizarre. I hit a problem with my work ISP just as I posted - the original must have just got through and then when they resolved their problem, they must have re-sent it.

[kucharek]

More than you ever want to know about Honeysuckle tracking station (and others) can be found here:

http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/

They are currently preparing a big 35th anniversary party...

Harald

[Peter B]

Wow! Harald, thanks very much for posting the link.

I think I might try to get along to that event, seeing as it's happening in Canberra, where I live.

[Glom]

Are we sure that it is Armstrong? It looks like a shot of the bit when Aldrin descends.

[Irishman]

Glom, it's my understanding the reason they rigged the camera on the MESA was to capture Armstrong. That's definitely the MESA. I don't think they filmed Aldrin. Rather, Armstrong took photos of Aldrin.

You might check ALSJ.

[ToSeek]

There's video of Aldrin descending from the ALSJ. It doesn't look the same to me as the image above. (It's better - obviously Parkes is on the job at this point!)

By the way, it seems from the ALSJ that the video with Armstrong descending the ladder is from Goldstone. It's only when he's talking about the surface texture, just before stepping onto the Moon, that they switch to Honeysuckle.

[calliarcale]

I thought the black bar really was due to the equipment at Goldstone. But not the antenna.... "The Dish" received the picture, which lacked the black bar, and retransmitted it to NASA, quite possibly at Goldstone. A television camera was then pointed at a monitor to rapidly convert it into a form that American television sets could understand. The black bar is a result of the camera and monitor not being synchronized properly, so that the camera is not catching complete frames but is rather catching the top half of one frame and the bottom half of another in the middle of the period when the monitor is "painting" the second frame onto the screen. What you really want is for the camera to record the frame at the exact moment when the monitor has just finished painting it. Otherwise, you'll get a black bar somewhere on the screen in the final recording.

[Extravoice]

A television camera was then pointed at a monitor to rapidly convert it into a form that American television sets could understand.

I used to work with a guy who spent many years working at RCA in the area of video processing. He once told me he worked on something called an "Apollo Scan Converter" or something with a similar name. I assume its purpose was perform just such such a conversion.

He used to joke " During the Sixties I worked on a little project. You may have heard of it...it was called Apollo."

[sts60]

Apologies for resurrecting this thread, but I came across some commentary which is relevant to the Goldstone/Parkes situation. This is from the NASA/JPL Space Programs Summary 37-59, Vol. II, The Deep Space Network, For the Period July 1 to August 31, 1969. Notes: DSS 14 = Goldstone 210-ft antenna, MSC = Manned Spacecrat Center (Houston), MSFN = Manned Space Flight Network.

The original requirement for DSS 14's participation in the Apollo 11 Mission was to provide television coverage during lunar surface operations since the Lunar Module erectible high-gain antenna would not be carried on the first manned landing mission, and the additional gain of the DSS 14 210-ft antenna over that provided by the 85-ft antenna stations would be necessary to receive the television transmission via the Lunar Module's 2-ft steerable antenna. However, the experience gained on the Apollo 10 Mission ... caused a modification to the flight plan and its resulting support requirements from DSS 14.

It was discovered that during the Lunar Module descent phase, the spacecraft attitude changes that were necessary to perform a landing on the moon could cause dropouts in the high bit-rate telemetry stream into an 85-ft antenna. Since such dropouts could cause the mission to be aborted, the MSC decided to delay the Lunar Module descent from lunar orbit 13 to lunar orbit 14 so that the descent would be visible from DSS 14 thereby providing high bit-rate telemetry backup via the spacecraft omni-antenna. In so doing, this would shift the nominal time-line for the astronauts' descent to the lunar surface and the lunar surface operations to very late in the DSS 14 view period, with a much lower probability of television coverage. To offset this latter condition, the MSFN made arrangements with the Australian government to utitlize the Parkes-Australia 210-ft radio astronomy antenna to provide the desired lunar surface television coverage.

Since, during the actual mission, Commander Armstrong decided to advance the lunar surface operations to earlier in the time schedule, both the DSS 14 and the Parkes 210-ft antennas were able to provide coverage during that time period. Mission Control Center at MSC made an operational decision to have the Parkes antenna provide the television coverage and the DSS 14 antenna provide the very important portable life-support system (PLSS) telemetry coverage during this very critical period. Both 210-ft antennas performed excellently.

[The Bad Astronomer]

Interesting. Well, in about three weeks I'll be at Parkes, so I'll ask someone there. 8)

[ToSeek]

Interesting. Well, in about three weeks I'll be at Parkes, so I'll ask someone there. 8)

Showoff!

[jaydeehess]

Is Honeysuckle Creek the same place as Carnarvon? If not what is Carnarvon as on the Clavius site the TV broadcast was received there. I have to get this straight if I am to battle it out with HB's

[ToSeek]

Carnarvon is not the same as Honeysuckle Creek.

My impression from the writeup in Clavius is that Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes received the broadcast directly from Apollo 11. Carnarvon received the broadcast via satellite from those sources in order to be able to distribute it to western Australia.

[kucharek]

Parkes was abackup to Heneysuckle when it comes to receiving the tv signal. When the transmission started, the moon was too low in the sky for Parkes. Goldstone had some problems with the signal, so the picture from Honeysuckle was used. After a few minutes the moon had risen enough and Parkes could provide a better picture due to their larger dish.

For the whole nine yards, go to http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/

There is an error in the JPL/NASA quote: Eagle carried an erectible high gain antenna, but because the signal quality earth received through the steerable S-band, they saved the time.

From the ALSJ:

109:22:09 Aldrin: You got a good picture, huh?

109:22:11 McCandless: There's a great deal of contrast in it; and currently it's upside-down on our monitor, but we can make out a fair amount of detail.

[Armstrong - "We wanted to make sure the picture was adequate so that we didn't have to take the time to unpack that (S-band) antenna and unfold it. It was pretty good size. I'd say it's maybe eight feet across."]

[This was the S-Band antenna that was deployed on 12 and 14. On Apollo 11, it was stowed in LM Quad I to the right of the ladder. I then asked about the relative priority of the TV.]

[Armstrong - "I was fully prepared to deploy the antenna, and I practiced with it a bunch of times so I wouldn't call it low priority. But we were glad that we didn't have to take the time to do that."]

[kucharek]

Interesting. Well, in about three weeks I'll be at Parkes, so I'll ask someone there. 8)

Perhaps you should first go to Canberra and get a briefing by Mike Dinn and John Saxon so you can better resist the Parkes-brainwash... 8)

[pghnative]

In this thread there are two great examples which show how incredibly unlikely it is that NASA faked the moon landing. No competent faker would ever add unnecessary complexity to their hoax. And yet:

1) In sts60's post, we see that NASA was not going to use Goldstone's antenna during the landing, but then saw signal dropouts during Apollo 10 so they decided to use Goldstone. this caused them to delay Apollo 11's landing by one orbit, forcing them to ask Australia to have Parkes available for the moon walk TV, but then Armstrong moved up the walk so they could still use Goldstone, but then Goldstone had poor reception, so they used Parkes anyway.

2) They were going to erect a separate antenna from the LM, but first they checked the signal quality -- when it was fine, they didn't bother.

Both examples (and I'm sure there are thousands of others) violate the Keep-It-Simple (Stupid) approach to getting anything accomplished in this world. If it was hoaxed, why bother inventing signal dropouts in 10 causing all the extra hassle? And once the extra hassle was started, why move up the (fake) moonwalk? If it was a fake, you'd just keep to the script.