Picture
by Hamish Lindsay
Picture
by Hamish Lindsay
The station was part of NASA's Manned Spaceflight Network (MSFN) built in 1965/66 and opened in March1967. It was built as one of three 26M antenna sites (the others were in California and Spain) specifically to support the Lunar phases of the Apollo missions to the moon. After Apollo the station went on to support Skylab and then Deep space missions (as DSS 44) before finally closing it's doors in 1981. The Antenna was moved to the nearby Deep Space station at Tidbinbilla CDSCC and it was eventually closed in 2010. Today the antenna is preserved as a Heritage site.
During it's short history, Honeysuckle supported many missions with distinction, including relaying Neil Armstrong's first steps on the lunar surface on 21st July 1969 (local date). A whole bunch of old pictures are posted here. Just a note that this website pales into insignificance compared with Colin Mackellar's superb site at www.honeysucklecreek.net
There is also a large (601 Kb)
after- Apollo picture (Click the thumbnail for the full sized version, annotated
with most names)
It's proving to be quite difficult to reconstruct who worked at the station and their current contact information - not surprising after 30 years. But I feel that this important information will be lost unless we make the effort to reconstruct it now. A contact database listing can be downloaded here. NOTE: To avoid search engines indexing the list - you will need a password.
We would be most grateful for
more names, contact information and corrections. We are also trying to
complete a list of all who worked at HSK during the Apollo-11 mission - to see
that list click here.
If you worked at HSK and you are not already on the E-mailing list - why not join it by visiting https://lists.tip.net.au/mailman/listinfo/honeysuckle and keep up with the old crowd? Please O.K. Security certificate warnings. Our certificate is definitely valid.
John Saxon 11Feb2017