April 2-6, 2025
After 4 days at Wooramel it was time to move on and this time only 120km to Carnarvon and the Capricorn Holiday Park. Arriving early we drove to the waterfront and enjoyed a morning coffee before checking in.
With 4 days here we fitted in a walk around the town and waterfront followed by a short drive out to One Mile Jetty and Pelican Point; click on any image for the full gallery:
The Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum occupies the site of the Carnarvon OTC satellite earth station but also includes equipment and history of the Carnarvon Tracking Station which was 4km further South.
“The Carnarvon Tracking Station was located 10 kilometres south from Carnarvon. The station was built to support NASA’s Gemini, Apollo and Skylab programs. It was commissioned in 1964 and operated for 11 years. It was the last station to communicate with the space capsules leaving the earth orbit, and the last to make contact before splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. At the height of the operation it had a staff of 220 people.
The OTC Satellite Earth Station (and now museum site) is situated at the northern end of Browns Range, about 6 kilometres from the centre of Carnarvon, and 4 kilometres north of the Tracking Station. The OTC Satellite Earth Station was opened in1966, initially with the 12.8 metre wide Casshorn antenna as part of the global satellite communications system. The Casshorn antenna has interacting parabolic and hyperbolic reflectors in a characteristic ‘sugar scoop’ form.
On 21 July 1969, the day of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Casshorn antenna relayed Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon from NASA’s Honey Suckle Creek Tracking Station to Perth’s TV audience via Moree earth station – the first live telecast into Western Australia. Later in 1969, the larger 29.6 metre wide steerable antenna was built to facilitate better communication between the NASA Tracking Station and the USA.”
A actual size mock-up of the Apollo Command module allows you to sit reclined as the Astronauts did and listen to the take-off, video below:
Photo gallery around the Museum here, click any image:
