Which tracking station near Canberra helped receive Apollo 11's first moonwalk TV signal?

Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station near Canberra helped receive Apollo 11’s first moonwalk TV signal. Its large dish captured the lunar module Eagle’s slow-scan television transmission as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon.

The camera produced an unusual 10-frame-per-second, 320-line monochrome signal rather than ordinary broadcast television. Ground stations converted it in real time before the pictures were relayed to Houston and television networks worldwide.

Honeysuckle was not the only receiving site. Australia’s Parkes Observatory and NASA’s Goldstone station in California also received the transmission, and the ground stations’ signals were combined or selected during the broadcast. Parkes supplied much of the later moonwalk coverage, while Honeysuckle was especially important at the beginning.

A common mix-up is to name Parkes as the sole source of the first images. The station near Canberra was Honeysuckle Creek, a NASA tracking facility that supported Apollo communications until its work was transferred to the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at nearby Tidbinbilla.