Space Now History
The past behind what's next.
Space Now History is the living record of how space happened: what was built, what it cost, what changed, and what survived.
Then behind now
A story whose consequences are still in the record today.
Why the Moon landing arrived on television via a sheep paddock in Australia
The pictures of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the Moon reached the world through radio dishes in Australia, because the Moon was below the horizon in the United States for most of the moonwalk. A 26-metre antenna near Canberra carried the first eight and a half minutes; a 64-metre telescope at Parkes, built for radio astronomy rather than spaceflight, carried the remaining two hours and twelve minutes.
The same complex outside Canberra still does this job. Its 70-metre dish, DSS43, is currently the only antenna on Earth capable of sending commands to Voyager 2 — the geometry that made Australia essential in 1969 has not changed.
What changed in the record
Added, updated and corrected are three different things, and they are labelled separately.
Recently added
Recently updated
Recently corrected
Nothing yetNo record has been corrected yet.