Carnarvon and Apollo: One Giant Leap for a Small Australian Town Authors: Paul Dench and Alison Gregg Publisher: Rosenberg Publishing ISBN: 978-1-8770-5897-4 Price: £20 (Pb), 304pp
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For 12 years Carnarvon, a desert trading post on the remote north-west coast of Australia, provided NASA’s largest tracking station outside the US mainland. Established in 1963, it provided an essential stepping-stone enabling the Apollo astronauts to land on the Moon. Every spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral passed close to Carnarvon on its first orbit, and James Webb, head of NASA, said its ability to check their flight direction, altitude and velocity was essential to secure the astronauts’ safety. By 1975, however, a series of tracking and data relay satellites in geosynchronous orbit made the ground stations redundant. Carnarvon’s masts and dishes were demolished, so that it is once more nothing but a small trading and fishing port.

The famous film, The Dish, told a rather embellished story of the part Australia’s eastern tracking stations played in providing the first TV pictures of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. This rather patchy book tells the more technical and essential story of how Australia’s six tracking and relay stations enabled NASA to maintain contact with Apollo when, from their viewpoint, the craft were hidden on the far side of the Earth.

Carnarvon’s scientists played a major part in ensuring the safe return of the Apollo 13 crew in their crippled spacecraft. As re-entry began they warned NASA that two back-up gyros that had not been turned off were starting a power overload that could have finally destroyed the command module. They also monitored the jettisoned Lunar Module to ensure it plunged safely into deep water in the Pacific, since it contained a potentially lethal nuclear power pack.

The authors also describe how, four years after Carnarvon closed, falling debris from the 90-tonne Skylab space station was scattered across Australia. A youth of 17 collected some from his back garden, caught the first flight to California, and claimed a $10,000 prize for the first debris to be delivered.

Reginald Turnill