Tom Reid (electrical Engineer)
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Tom Reid (electrical Engineer)
Thomas Reid MBE (14 March 1927 – 2 October 2010) was the director of the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station outside Canberra, Australia, which in July 1969 transmitted live television of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the Moon to a world-wide audience of 600 million people. Early years Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Reid served in the Royal Navy from 1944 to 1947 and then obtained a first-class honours degree in electrical engineering from the University of Glasgow winning the Howe Prize in Electrical Engineering. Migrating to Australia in 1952, Reid served for five years as an electrical lieutenant in the Royal Australian Navy. Space tracking career Appointed officer-in-charge of Telemetry at the Woomera Rocket Range in 1958, Reid helped test British Medium-range ballistic missiles. The following year, he was put in charge of Woomera’s RCA AN/FPS-16 Instrumentation Radar which tracked NASA's Project Mercury spacecraft. After leaving Woomera in 1962, Reid became a senior lecturer ...
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Order Of The British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established on 4 June 1917 by King George V and comprises five classes across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two of which make the recipient either a knight if male or dame if female. There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with, but not members of, the order. Recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire were originally made on the nomination of the United Kingdom, the self-governing Dominions of the Empire (later Commonwealth) and the Viceroy of India. Nominations continue today from Commonwealth countries that participate in recommending British honours. Most Commonwealth countries ceased recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire when they ...
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Pioneer Program
The Pioneer programs were two series of United States lunar and planetary space probes exploration. The first program, which ran from 1958 to 1960, unsuccessfully attempted to send spacecraft to orbit the Moon, successfully sent one spacecraft to fly by the Moon, and successfully sent one spacecraft to investigate interplanetary space between the orbits of Earth and Venus. The second program, which ran from 1965 to 1992, sent four spacecraft to measure interplanetary space weather, two to explore Jupiter and Saturn, and two to explore Venus. The two outer planet probes, ''Pioneer 10'' and ''Pioneer 11'', became the first two of five artificial objects to achieve the escape velocity that will allow them to leave the Solar System, and carried a golden plaque each depicting a man and a woman and information about the origin and the creators of the probes, in case any extraterrestrials find them someday. Naming Credit for naming the first probe has been attributed to Stephen A. Sal ...
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Tidbinbilla Tracking Station
The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC) is a satellite communication station, part of the Deep Space Network of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), located at Tidbinbilla in the Australian Capital Territory. Opened in 1965, the complex was used for tracking the Apollo Lunar Module, and along with its two sister stations at Goldstone, California and Madrid, Spain is now used for tracking and communicating with NASA's spacecraft, particularly interplanetary missions. Its DSS-43 antenna is the only antenna on Earth that can send commands to Voyager 2. It is managed in Australia by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) for NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation program (SCaN) at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Location The complex is located in the Paddys River (a tributary of the Cotter River) valley, about 20 km from Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory. The complex is part of the Deep Space Netwo ...
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Lunar Module Eagle
Lunar Module ''Eagle'' (LM-5) is the spacecraft that served as the crewed lunar lander of Apollo 11, which was the first mission to land humans on the Moon. It was named after the bald eagle, which was featured prominently on the mission insignia. It flew from Earth to lunar orbit on the command module ''Columbia'', and then was flown to the Moon on July 20, 1969, by astronaut Neil Armstrong with navigational assistance from Buzz Aldrin. ''Eagle''s landing created Tranquility Base, named by Armstrong and Aldrin and first announced upon the module's touchdown. The name of the craft gave rise to the phrase "The Eagle has Landed", the words Armstrong said upon ''Eagle''s touchdown. The phrase was used as the title of a best-selling 1975 book, set during the Second World War, and the 1976 film adaptation. Flight ''Eagle'' was launched with command module ''Columbia'' on July 16, 1969, atop a Saturn V launch vehicle from Launch Complex 39A, and entered Earth orbit 12 m ...
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Apollo Lunar Module
The Apollo Lunar Module (LM ), originally designated the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), was the lunar lander spacecraft that was flown between lunar orbit and the Moon's surface during the United States' Apollo program. It was the first crewed spacecraft to operate exclusively in the airless vacuum of space, and remains the only crewed vehicle to land anywhere beyond Earth. Structurally and aerodynamically incapable of flight through Earth's atmosphere, the two-stage lunar module was ferried to lunar orbit attached to the Apollo command and service module (CSM), about twice its mass. Its crew of two flew the complete lunar module from lunar orbit to the Moon's surface. During takeoff, the spent descent stage was used as a launch pad for the ascent stage which then flew back to the command module, after which it was also discarded. Overseen by Grumman, the LM's development was plagued with problems that delayed its first uncrewed flight by about ten months and its first crewed ...
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Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex
The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (GDSCC), commonly called the Goldstone Observatory, is a satellite ground station located in Fort Irwin in the U.S. state of California. Operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), its main purpose is to track and communicate with interplanetary space missions. It is named after Goldstone, California, a nearby gold-mining ghost town. The station is one of three satellite communication stations in the NASA Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program’s Deep Space Network (DSN), whose mission is to provide the vital two-way communications link that tracks and controls interplanetary spacecraft and receives the images and scientific information they collect. The others are the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex in Spain and the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Australia. These three stations are located at separations of approximately 120° longitude so that as the Earth rotates a spacecraft wil ...
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Time In Australia
Australia uses three main time zones: Australian Western Standard Time (AWST; UTC+08:00), Australian Central Standard Time (ACST; UTC+09:30), and Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST; UTC+10:00). Time is regulated by the individual state governments, some of which observe daylight saving time (DST). Australia's external territories observe different time zones. Standard time was introduced in the 1890s when all of the Australian colonies adopted it. Before the switch to standard time zones, each local city or town was free to determine its local time, called local mean time. Now, Western Australia uses Western Standard Time; South Australia and the Northern Territory use Central Standard Time; while New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, Jervis Bay Territory, and the Australian Capital Territory use Eastern Standard Time. Daylight saving time (+1 hour) is used in jurisdictions in the south and south-east: South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Je ...
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Orroral Valley Tracking Station
The Orroral Valley tracking station, was Earth station in Australia, supported Earth-orbiting satellites, as part of NASA's Spacecraft Tracking and Data Acquisition Network (STADAN). It was located approximately 50 km south of Canberra, Australian Capital Territory (ACT), and was one of three tracking stations in the ACT, and seven in Australia. Construction of the site commenced shortly after site selection in 1963 and was completed in May 1965. It was home to a 26 m antenna and several smaller VHF and microwave frequency antennas. The main requirement of the station, as distinct from the long-range communication tasks of Tidbinbilla and Honeysuckle Creek, was to be able to quickly switch from supporting one satellite to another. The signal received from satellites in Earth orbit are relatively strong but view periods are short, a few minutes being typical. Many of the supported satellites used different systems for transmitting data, or for receiving commands so the ...
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South Australian Institute Of Technology
The University of South Australia (UniSA) is a public research university in the Australian state of South Australia. It is a founding member of the Australian Technology Network of universities, and is the largest university in South Australia with approximately 37,000 students. The university was founded in its current form in 1991 with the merger of the South Australian Institute of Technology (SAIT, established in 1889 as the South Australian School of Mines and Industries) and the South Australian College of Advanced Education (SACAE, established 1856). The legislation to establish and name the new University of South Australia was introduced by the Hon Mike Rann MP, Minister of Employment and Further Education. Under the University's Act, its original mission was "to preserve, extend and disseminate knowledge through teaching, research, scholarship and consultancy, and to provide educational programs that will enhance the diverse cultural life of the wider community". Un ...
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Project Mercury
Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. Taken over from the US Air Force by the newly created civilian space agency NASA, it conducted 20 uncrewed developmental flights (some using animals), and six successful flights by astronauts. The program, which took its name from Roman mythology, cost $ (adjusted for inflation). The astronauts were collectively known as the "Mercury Seven", and each spacecraft was given a name ending with a "7" by its pilot. The Space Race began with the 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1. This came as a shock to the American public, and led to the creation of NASA to expedite existing US space exploration efforts, and place most of them under civilian control. After the successful launch of the Explorer 1 satellite in 1958, crewed spacef ...
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