Who Carried the Voice from the Moon?

Conspiracy Files · Apollo · Collins Radio · VK6
Who Carried the Voice from the Moon?
Collins Radio, a Western Australian tracking station, a handful of radio amateurs with home-built antennas — and the radio chain the moon-hoax theory has never managed to break.

Every moon-hoax argument eventually runs into the same awkward fact: radio. The pictures can be argued about, the shadows debated and the flag’s ripple analysed frame by frame, but the voices from the Moon were radio signals. Radio signals obey physics, they can be received by anyone with the right antenna pointed in the right direction, and in 1969 several people with no connection to NASA did exactly that.

This is the story of the radio chain that carried those voices: who designed it, who built it, who ran it, and who listened in uninvited. It runs from the Collins Radio Company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to a NASA tracking station on the coast of Western Australia, to a chicken-wire horn antenna in a Kentucky backyard. Along the way it meets the astronauts whose voices crossed 384,000 kilometres of space, the CAPCOMs who answered them, the Australian technicians who put the first pictures on the world’s screens, and the engineers who spent three years looking for the tapes that hoax believers say never existed.

The short version
The claim: Apollo’s voices and TV were faked on Earth or broadcast from Earth orbit, and NASA “lost” the tapes because there was nothing real to keep.
The radio record: Collins Radio was the systems integrator for Apollo’s Unified S-Band communications system, built key spacecraft radio equipment, and supplied and installed the ground stations under a 1964 NASA contract — including Carnarvon, Western Australia, whose operators trained at Collins.[1][2][3] Radio amateurs and observatories in the United States, Italy and Germany independently received Apollo signals from the direction of the Moon, and the signals vanished when their antennas drifted off it.[4][5][6] The “lost tapes” were backup recordings that NASA erased and reused; the moonwalk itself was broadcast live and survives.[7]
This time there are no villains to name. Unlike the Committee of 300 post, this is a story about the people who made the radio chain work — profiled below.
In this post
  1. The claim: “it was all faked”
  2. The radio chain, link by link
  3. Collins Radio: the company that wired the Moon
  4. The VK6 connection: Carnarvon and the Perth tapes
  5. The listeners: amateurs and observatories
  6. The voices: astronauts and CAPCOMs
  7. The ground crews: Australia, Goldstone and Houston
  8. The lost tapes, explained
  9. Fact check: six hoax claims against the radio record
  10. Timeline
  11. Summary: what the hoax gets wrong about radio
  12. Notes and references

1 — The claim: “it was all faked”

Moon-landing hoax theories come in many flavours, but the radio-related claims are remarkably consistent. The voices were recorded in a studio, or relayed from a spacecraft that never left Earth orbit. The conversations show no radio delay, which a real 384,000-kilometre round trip would produce. The Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales was supposedly told to stand down before the moonwalk. And NASA cannot produce the original moonwalk tapes — which, the argument goes, is because they never existed.[8]

These ideas are not fringe in the way one might hope. Gallup found 6% of Americans doubting the landings in 1999; an Ipsos poll for C-SPAN in 2019 found the same 6% overall but 11% among millennials.[8] Every one of the radio claims, however, makes a testable prediction about radio — and radio is something this site’s readers understand rather well.

2 — The radio chain, link by link

Apollo used a single integrated microwave link, the Unified S-Band system, to carry voice, telemetry, ranging and television at once. The concept was developed by NASA, JPL and MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory; Goddard Space Flight Center ran the ground network.[9] Following a single sentence from the Moon to a living room looks like this:

Link What it was Who built or ran it
1. The spacesuit Each moonwalker’s backpack carried a VHF radio that talked to the lunar module. RCA built the extravehicular (backpack) radios;[10] Motorola says it supplied Armstrong’s backpack antenna.[11]
2. The lunar module The LM processed the suit voice and put it on a 1.25 MHz subcarrier for its S-band transmitter.[12] RCA managed the LM’s communications; Collins Radio built the S-band signal processor, Motorola the S-band transceivers, Raytheon the power amplifier.[10][13]
3. The command module Downlink on 2287.5 MHz, uplink on 2106.40625 MHz; downlink voice on a 1.25 MHz subcarrier, uplink voice on 30 kHz.[9] Collins Radio held the $130.3 million communications and data subsystem subcontract and built the audio centre, HF transceiver, premodulation processor, VHF recovery beacon and S-band power amplifier; Motorola built the S-band transponder under Collins; RCA the VHF/AM transceiver.[14][15][16]
4. The system Integration of transponders, ground equipment and procedures into one working system. Collins Radio, chosen as Unified S-Band systems integrator.[1]
5. The ground stations Three 85-foot (26-metre) prime stations — Goldstone, Madrid and Honeysuckle Creek — and eleven 30-foot (9-metre) stations, plus the Parkes radio telescope for television.[17] Collins won the USB ground-system contract on 14 July 1964, supplied the 30-foot stations (Blaw-Knox fabricated the antennas under subcontract) and integrated the USB equipment on site at the 85-foot stations; JPL supplied receiver-exciters and Energy Systems power amplifiers. Parkes’s links were PMG and OTC.[18][19][20]
6. Houston and the world Mission Control chose which station’s TV picture to send out; networks relayed it to an estimated 600 million viewers.[21] NASA — Charlie Goodman selected the TV feeds.[22] Australia’s ABC took its picture straight from Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek, so Australians saw the moonwalk seconds before anyone else.[8]
Why the chain matters to the hoax question
A faked signal would have to fool every link at once — including hardware built by competing companies, stations in Australia, Spain and the United States, and receivers owned by people who did not work for NASA at all. The more of the chain you can name, the harder the hoax becomes to imagine.

3 — Collins Radio: the company that wired the Moon

For readers who know Collins through the S-Line, the KWM-2 or the R-390A, its space work is the lesser-known half of the company’s history. Collins equipment flew aboard the first manned Mercury capsule, was used throughout Gemini and Apollo, and carried Skylab’s astronauts’ voices to Earth in 1973.[23][24] In 1962 the company set up an Apollo Project Office in Cedar Rapids under Dr S. E. Watson, with R. J. Pierce as technical director and antenna and ground-support studies at its Dallas Division.[25]

Systems integrator for Apollo’s radio

When NASA’s prime contractor for the command and service module, North American Aviation, let the spacecraft communications work, Collins Radio won what one NAA engineer called a “major subcontract for Apollo Spacecraft Communications.”[16] Collins was also chosen as the Unified S-Band systems integrator.[1] The command-module subcontract for “communications and data subsystems” was worth $130,317,000.[14] Collins designed and built the audio centre, HF transceiver, premodulation processor, VHF recovery beacon and S-band power amplifier, and subcontracted the S-band transponder to Motorola’s Scottsdale division.[15][16] Surviving units still carry the Collins nameplate: a premodulation processor taken apart by engineer Ken Shirriff was built by Collins Radio in 1966.[26]

In the lunar module the arrangement was different. Grumman gave RCA the communications system, and RCA built the VHF radios and the astronauts’ backpack radios — but the LM’s S-band signal processor, which took the suit voice and put it on the subcarrier for the trip to Earth, was Collins Radio’s.[10][13][12] So when Armstrong spoke on the Moon, his words went from an RCA backpack radio through a Collins signal processor to a Motorola transmitter — and Houston took the voice from Goldstone, an 85-foot station whose Unified S-Band equipment Collins had integrated on site.[27][18]

So who carried Armstrong’s words — Collins or Motorola?
Both companies have claimed the honour, and both are right at different levels. Motorola’s 50th-anniversary release says the “one small step” words came through its S-band equipment.[11] That equipment sat inside a system Collins integrated, fed by a Collins signal processor, talking to ground stations Collins built. (A 2019 local TV report that Armstrong “used a Collins Radio” goes too far — his backpack radio was RCA’s.)[28][10] The design concept belonged to NASA, JPL and MIT Lincoln Laboratory.[9] Apollo’s radio was a team effort — which is exactly why it would have been so hard to fake.

Builder of the ground network

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center awarded the Unified S-Band ground-system contract to Collins Radio on 14 July 1964.[18] In 1965 the company magazine Collins Signal reported that the “design, construction and installation of the ground stations is being performed by Collins Radio Company,” listing the 30-foot sites from Ascension Island and Bermuda to Guam, Hawaii — and Carnarvon, Australia.[2] A 1969 issue described Collins as prime contractor to Goddard Space Flight Center for the unified S-band ground network.[29] Engineering notes on NASA’s 1965 Unified S-Band conference record that Collins “developed nearly all of the remainder of the USB system,” developed the 30-foot antennas, and was prime contractor for installing all equipment; the antenna structures themselves were fabricated by Blaw-Knox under subcontract to Collins.[19][18] By 1968–69 the network ran eleven 30-foot stations and three 85-foot prime stations, plus a test and training facility at Goddard.[17] Collins’s USB project director for the ground network was George F. Mansur.[30]

Collins came looking for the eavesdropper

One detail ties the company directly to the amateur side of this story. After Larry Baysinger, W4EJA, picked up the Apollo 11 astronauts on his home-built antenna in Louisville (profiled below), he was interviewed by the Collins Radio Company — “which supplied the communications systems for the Apollo spacecraft,” as the ARRL’s account puts it — and “Collins was impressed with Baysinger’s work.”[4][31] The firm that built the official radio chain took an independent amateur reception seriously enough to send people to talk to him.

The Collins people
Cedar Rapids and Dallas
Arthur A. Collins · 9CXX
Founder of Collins Radio Company (9 September 1909 – 25 February 1987)
  • Born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma; raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.[23]
  • In 1925, aged fifteen, he ran amateur station 9CXX and for twenty-two days was the only operator in contact with the MacMillan Arctic expedition, working the flagship Bowdoin (WNP) on 15–21 metres. The National Geographic Society, the expedition’s sponsor, sent and received messages through his station.[23]
  • Incorporated Collins Radio Company in September 1933 (sources give the 22nd or the 25th); the business had begun in his basement around 1931.[23]
  • Collins equipment went to Antarctica with Admiral Byrd’s 1933–35 expedition, whose first formal broadcast from the continent went out on 3 February 1934.[23]
  • During the Apollo landings he turned down an interview request from Walter Cronkite, unwilling to take personal credit for his staff’s work.[23]
  • With the company losing money by the end of the 1960s, North American Rockwell bought control in 1971; the board removed him as president and chairman in November, and he resigned on 7 December 1971. The merger was approved on 2 November 1973. He later founded Arthur A. Collins, Inc. in Dallas, where he died.[23]
Why it matters: The fifteen-year-old who kept a radio link to the Arctic alive in 1925 built the company that kept one to the Moon in 1969 — and lost control of it two years later.
The Collins Apollo team · Cedar Rapids · Dallas
Engineers and managers named in Collins’s own records
  • Dr S. E. Watson headed the Apollo Project Office in Cedar Rapids from 1962, with R. J. Pierce as technical director, A. J. Svien on antenna and ground-support studies at the Dallas Division and R. R. Mosier as director of research.[25]
  • George F. Mansur was Collins’s Unified S-Band project director for the ground network.[30]
  • Sherrill L. Zimmerman and R. D. Carter appear in a 1966 photograph running system tests on the Block II command-module equipment.[15]
  • Jim Wescott, Apollo program manager, and staff including inspector Frank Knapp, recalled the work in 1989 interviews for KCRG television; Mike Wilson, later vice-president of operations, has been described as Collins’s first director of quality.[32]
  • George Whitehead engineered the command module’s PCM telemetry at North American Aviation before moving to Collins in late 1967; his first-hand account is the clearest statement that Collins subcontracted the transponder to Motorola.[16]
Why it matters: Behind the company name were Iowa and Texas engineers whose names survive mostly in the pages of Collins Signal.

4 — The VK6 connection: Carnarvon and the Perth tapes

The call-sign prefix VK6 means Western Australia, and Western Australia played a larger part in Apollo than most people realise.

Carnarvon Tracking Station (NASA call sign CRO)

About 10 km south of Carnarvon, on the Gascoyne coast, NASA’s largest station outside mainland USA was opened on 25 June 1964 by Australian minister Allen Fairhall and NASA’s Director of Tracking, Ed Buckley.[33][3] It was run by an Australian Department of Supply station director with operations contracted to AWA, and at its peak employed 220 people.[34][3] Alongside an FPQ-6 precision tracking radar it had a 9-metre (30-foot) dual Unified S-Band system[35][34] — one of the 30-foot stations supplied under the Collins Radio contract; its antenna structure was shipped to Carnarvon on 18 June 1965.[2][18]

The Collins connection was personal as well as technical. In July 1965 Carnarvon’s USB staff “flew to Dallas… for three months training at Collins Radio Company,” working on what the station’s heritage nomination describes as the first USB system ever assembled.[3]

On Apollo 11, Carnarvon transmitted the “GO for TLI” command that triggered the trans-lunar injection burn — the go/no-go confirmation that sent the spacecraft out of Earth orbit and on to the Moon.[3][21] It gave backup support for the latter part of the moonwalk, receiving direct television once the Moon rose over the Indian Ocean coast.[36] And when the crew set up their seismic and dust experiments, Carnarvon “sent the command signal to activate and then received its first transmitted data.”[3] It was also, in Wikipedia’s phrase, “the prime link for the last hours of re-entry to Earth.”[33]

The station closed in the mid-1970s (sources give dates between November 1974 and May 1975) and little more than foundations remains.[33][3] Its memory lives on in the Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum, opened by Buzz Aldrin in June 2012.[37]

Paul Dench · Carnarvon, WA
AWA engineer, later Chief Engineer and Company Manager at Carnarvon Tracking Station
  • Hired by AWA in May 1963 as its first tracker at Carnarvon; promoted to Chief Engineer in 1968, then Company Manager in 1970–71 (sources differ on the year).[38][3]
  • Watched Armstrong’s first step from Carnarvon, and recalled that during Apollo 13 Carnarvon was for a time the only station in contact with the crew.[38]
  • Co-wrote Carnarvon and Apollo (Rosenberg, 2010) with Alison Gregg, the standard history of the station.[38]
  • Died on 26 June, aged 86; Curtin University published its tribute in October 2020.[38]
Why it matters: Dench is the best-documented voice of Carnarvon’s Apollo years — the Western Australian link in the chain, in his own words.

The Perth tapes, 2006

On 1 November 2006 — twenty years ago this month — Cosmos magazine reported that Apollo-era NASA tapes had turned up at Curtin University in Perth.[7] With NASA’s search for the original moonwalk recordings in the news, the discovery was quickly folded into the “lost tapes” mystery.

The truth was more interesting and less sinister. Physicist Brian O’Brien — whose dust detector the Apollo 11 crew left on the Moon — had brought copies of the experiment data to Perth in 1971 when he became the first head of Western Australia’s Environmental Protection Authority.[39] They sat for decades in a small marine-science laboratory in Curtin’s physics building, where O’Brien and emeritus professor John de Laeter tracked them down.[40] They were copies of one-inch tapes recorded at Carnarvon, carrying data from the Early Apollo Surface Experiments Package — science, not television. As Goldstone’s retired Apollo engineer Bill Wood put it, they were “neither lost nor of the Moon landing.”[40]

Dr Brian O’Brien · Perth, WA
Space physicist whose dust detector flew on Apollo 11; first head of WA’s Environmental Protection Authority
  • Born 27 February 1934; died 7 August 2020.[39]
  • His dust detector flew on Apollo 11’s surface experiments package; Carnarvon recorded its data.[40]
  • Brought copies of the data tapes to Perth in 1971; found them again at Curtin University with John de Laeter, reported in November 2006.[39][40]
  • Reported counts of the recovered reels vary between sources, from “up to 100” to 177.[40]
Why it matters: The Perth tapes are often cited as a mysterious find. They were a Western Australian scientist’s own experiment data, recorded by a Western Australian tracking station.

5 — The listeners: amateurs and observatories

The strongest radio evidence that Apollo’s signals came from the Moon comes from people NASA did not employ. Their equipment ranged from chicken wire to research telescopes, and their results ranged from 35 minutes of clear audio to two fragments of a sentence. That variety is the point: they had no script to follow.

The listeners
Amateurs and independent observatories who received Apollo signals
Larry Baysinger · W4EJA
Broadcast technician and amateur radio astronomer, Louisville, Kentucky — Apollo 11, 20 July 1969
  • In 1969 a technician at WHAS radio and an amateur radio astronomer who also tracked satellites and received weather-satellite pictures.[4][31]
  • Built a steerable 8 × 12-foot “corner horn” antenna from spare aluminium, nylon cord and chicken wire, aimed by hand on the night.[4][31]
  • His receiver was a rebuilt, 20-year-old Army tank radio from surplus — one account says from a Korean War tank. No source names its make or model.[4][41][42]
  • He listened on VHF rather than the S-band link, receiving the astronauts’ backpack radios — one technical account identifies VHF channel B, 259.7 MHz.[42][43]
  • Recorded about 35 minutes of moonwalk conversation, including President Nixon’s call; his audio arrived 5–10 seconds ahead of the TV pictures, and the signal disappeared whenever the antenna drifted off the Moon.[4]
  • Afterwards he was interviewed by the Collins Radio Company, which was “impressed with Baysinger’s work.” He later featured in BBC Radio 3’s Space Ham (2013).[4][44]
  • He found nothing NASA had edited out: “absolutely everything was transmitted to the public on TV,” in Christopher Graney’s summary.[4]
Why it matters: A signal that fades when the antenna leaves the Moon came from the Moon. And the reception was printed in a newspaper three days later, so it cannot be a story invented after the fact.
Glenn Rutherford · Reporter
Louisville Courier-Journal reporter who documented Baysinger’s reception
  • Aged 23 in 1969, he helped aim the antenna by hand through cloud.[31][4]
  • His story, “Lunar Eavesdropping: Louisvillians hear moon walk talk on homemade equipment,” ran on 23 July 1969 and then sat on microfilm for forty years.[31]
  • In 2009, as an editor at The Record in Louisville, he mentioned the episode to astronomer Christopher Graney — which is how the story resurfaced.[31][41]
Why it matters: Contemporary print evidence: the reception was reported in 1969, not remembered in hindsight.
Paul M. Wilson · W4HHK · SK
VHF/UHF and moonbounce pioneer, Collierville, Tennessee
  • First licensed in 1941 at 16; Merchant Marine radio operator in the Second World War; 30 years as an engineer at WMC-TV, Memphis.[45]
  • Began building an 18-foot dish in 1961, made some of the first 70 cm moonbounce (EME) contacts in 1965 and the first 2304 MHz EME contact, with W3GKP, on 19 October 1970.[45]
  • His obituary says he used the dish to monitor the Apollo 10 command module on 2.2 GHz and that NASA confirmed his reports with a photograph signed by the astronauts (it dates this to 1968, though Apollo 10 flew in May 1969).[45]
  • With Richard Knadle, K2RIW, he heard voice signals from Apollo 15’s command module in lunar orbit on 1 August 1971, and later reported Apollo 16 signals; the work appeared in QST.[9][46]
  • Died 29 November 1999, aged 75.[45]
Why it matters: Amateur equipment received the Apollo S-band microwave link itself — the link hoax theories say was faked — and NASA confirmed it.
Richard T. “Dick” Knadle Jr. · K2RIW · SK
Antenna and amplifier designer, Dix Hills, New York
  • Senior staff engineer at Airborne Instruments Laboratory from 1964 to 2000; winner of the 2010 ARRL Technical Achievement Award.[47]
  • Known to VHF operators for the RIW-16 432 MHz Yagi and a 432 MHz stripline amplifier published in QST.[47]
  • Co-receiver, with W4HHK, of Apollo 15 voice from lunar orbit in August 1971 and of Apollo 16 signals in 1972.[9][43]
  • Still running a weekly technical net in 2020; his death, aged 80, was announced in April 2020.[47]
Why it matters: A second, independent station hearing the same signals is what turns an interesting claim into evidence.
Sven Grahn and Dick Flagg · Apollo 17
Swedish space engineer and University of Florida radio astronomer — Gainesville, Florida, December 1972
  • Grahn later headed the space-systems division of the Swedish Space Corporation and is an honorary doctor of KTH, Stockholm.[48]
  • In late 1972 he and Dick Flagg used a University of Florida dish of about 30 feet (9 metres) near Gainesville to listen to Apollo 17.[48][4][43]
  • They picked up command-module transmissions from lunar orbit — only two recognisable voice transmissions, each a few words long — attributed to Ron Evans aboard America.[48][4]
  • Flagg went on to write for NASA’s Radio JOVE amateur radio-astronomy programme.[49]
Why it matters: Modest results honestly reported are more convincing than spectacular ones. Two sentence fragments from lunar orbit is exactly what a 30-foot dish should manage.
Arcetri Observatory team · Florence, Italy
Solar radio astronomers under director Guglielmo Righini — Apollo 11, July 1969
  • The observatory’s solar radio telescope was modified with a new receiver — a Microdyne, according to a 2023 history — to listen to the Apollo transmissions.[5]
  • On the night of 20 July 1969 a team of technicians and astronomers received and decoded the astronauts’ voices live; Righini supervised the project but spent that night in a television studio.[5]
  • Their original tapes were later lost in an office move — Italy has its own “lost Apollo tapes” — but the receiver survives at Arcetri.[5]
Why it matters: A professional European observatory with no NASA ties heard the landing as it happened.
Heinz Kaminski · Bochum, Germany
Founder of the Bochum Observatory (1921–2002)
  • Received Sputnik 1 on 7 October 1957, three days after launch.[6]
  • Installed a 20-metre dish in a radome in 1967, “with which all Apollo missions were followed.”[6]
  • Bochum’s Apollo 11 recordings hold astronaut audio, and the observatory later intercepted Apollo 16 television.[46]
Why it matters: Cold War West Germany had its own professional ears on Apollo, independent of NASA.
Salisbury and Fernald · Harvard / Smithsonian
Researchers who published Apollo 15 reception in Nature
  • Their letter in Nature (12 November 1971) reports receiving the radio signal of Apollo 15’s command module as it came out from behind the Moon.[50]
Why it matters: A peer-reviewed scientific journal recorded independent reception within months of the mission.
The test any listener can apply
Each of these receptions depended on pointing an antenna at the Moon. When Baysinger’s horn drifted off the Moon, the voices went with it.[4] A transmitter in Earth orbit would cross the sky on its own path, in minutes; a studio on Earth would not be in the sky at all.

6 — The voices: astronauts and CAPCOMs

Mission Control spoke to the crews through a single astronaut on the ground, the capsule communicator or CAPCOM. On Apollo 11 four CAPCOMs worked shifts across three flight-control teams.[51] Two of the astronauts below were licensed radio amateurs.

Apollo 11 — Columbia and Eagle
Launched 16 July 1969; landed 20 July; splashed down 24 July
Neil Armstrong · Commander
Apollo 11 commander, first person to walk on the Moon (5 August 1930 – 25 August 2012)
  • Command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966, with David Scott.[52]
  • Stepped onto the surface at 109:24:23 mission elapsed time: “That’s one small step for (a) man; one giant leap for mankind.” The “a” is not audible on the recording.[53]
  • His backpack VHF transmitter is the signal Larry Baysinger received in Louisville.[43][4]
Why it matters: The most famous words ever radioed were heard directly by an amateur station, not just through NASA’s network.
Buzz Aldrin · Lunar Module Pilot
Apollo 11 LM pilot (born 20 January 1930)
  • During the descent he reported Eagle’s steerable high-gain antenna oscillating in yaw — one cause of the data dropouts Houston fought through the landing.[53]
  • On the moonwalk his voice-operated switch was set less sensitively than it should have been, so many of his transmissions were clipped; CAPCOM Bruce McCandless had to ask him to repeat himself.[54][53]
  • On 9 September 2002, after hoax proponent Bart Sibrel confronted him outside a Beverly Hills hotel, demanded he swear on a Bible and called him a coward and a liar, Aldrin — then 72 — punched him. Prosecutors declined to bring charges.[55]
  • Opened the Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum in Western Australia in June 2012.[37]
Why it matters: The astronaut who physically confronted a hoax proponent, whose own radio glitches are preserved on the tapes.
Michael Collins · Command Module Pilot
Apollo 11 CMP aboard Columbia (31 October 1930 – 28 April 2021)
  • As CAPCOM for Apollo 8 in December 1968, he gave the first crew to leave Earth orbit their “Go for TLI.”[56]
  • During the landing he relayed for Eagle when its link to Houston dropped out: “Eagle, this is Columbia. They just gave you a Go for powered descent.”[53]
  • Out of radio contact for 48 minutes on every pass behind the Moon.[56]
  • Asked later about hoax claims, he pointed out how hard it would be for even two Americans to keep a secret of that size.[57]
  • Shares a surname with Collins Radio’s founder, Arthur Collins — a coincidence; no source we found suggests any family connection.
Why it matters: The radio relay in lunar orbit, and the man most familiar with radio silence — it happened to him on every orbit.
Charlie Duke · CAPCOM
Apollo 11 landing CAPCOM; later Apollo 16 LM pilot (born 3 October 1935)
  • Requested by the crew after serving as CAPCOM for Apollo 10’s lunar-module phases; came on shift with Gene Kranz’s White Team for the landing.[58]
  • Talked Eagle down through data dropouts: “Columbia, Houston. We’ve lost all data with Eagle,” and later, “We’ve got data dropout. You’re still looking good.”[53]
  • Answered “The Eagle has landed” with the stumble that became famous: “Roger, Twan—Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again.”[53]
  • Walked on the Moon himself on Apollo 16, when the lunar module’s steerable antenna failed and voice workarounds kept the landing on track.[59]
Why it matters: His is the Houston voice of the landing — and he flew to the Moon himself three years later.
Bruce McCandless II · CAPCOM
Apollo 11 EVA CAPCOM (8 June 1937 – 21 December 2017)
  • CAPCOM for launch, Earth orbit and the moonwalk, from 105:47:50.[54][51]
  • Called the first lunar TV pictures as Houston switched between Goldstone, Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes: “And we’re getting a picture on the TV,” adding that it was upside-down on their monitor.[53]
  • Later made the first untethered spacewalk with the Manned Maneuvering Unit, on STS-41-B in February 1984.[54]
Why it matters: His voice is on the “one small step” audio, and on the moment the first TV picture arrived.
Owen Garriott · W5LFL · SK
Apollo 11 CAPCOM; Skylab astronaut; first radio amateur to operate from space (22 November 1930 – 15 April 2019)
  • Took over as Apollo 11 CAPCOM after the landing, at 104:49:39, and was on the console during the crew’s first night on the Moon — at one point telling them to switch to the S-band omni antenna.[60][54]
  • Flew Skylab 3 from 28 July to 25 September 1973; Skylab’s astronaut-to-Earth link used Collins equipment.[60][24]
  • On STS-9 in December 1983 he made the first amateur radio contacts from space, calling CQ from Columbia on a 2-metre handheld with a window antenna; reported totals range from about 250 to 300 contacts.[60]
Why it matters: A licensed ham was on the Mission Control end of the real Apollo 11 radio link.
Ron Evans · CAPCOM
Apollo 11 CAPCOM; Apollo 17 CMP (10 November 1933 – 6 April 1990)
  • Woke the Apollo 11 crew on day five: “Good morning from the Black Team,” and was CAPCOM for Eagle’s liftoff from the Moon: “you’re cleared for takeoff.”[61]
  • Flew Apollo 17 as command-module pilot of America in December 1972 — the last person to orbit the Moon alone, logging 147 hours 43 minutes in lunar orbit.[61]
  • His transmissions from lunar orbit are the ones Sven Grahn and Dick Flagg picked up in Florida.[48]
Why it matters: The voice heard from lunar orbit by a non-NASA receiver.
Apollo 15 — Endeavour and Falcon
Launched 26 July 1971; landed 30 July; splashed down 7 August
David Scott · Commander
Apollo 15 commander (born 6 June 1932)
  • Flew Gemini 8 with Armstrong in 1966 and was command module pilot of Gumdrop on Apollo 9.[62]
  • On 2 August 1971 he dropped a hammer and a falcon feather on live television; they landed together. “How about that!” — “Which proves that Mr. Galileo was correct in his findings.”[63]
Why it matters: A live, televised experiment that only works in a vacuum, transmitted through the same S-band chain.
James Irwin · Lunar Module Pilot
Apollo 15 LM pilot (17 March 1930 – 8 August 1991)
  • Biomedical telemetry radioed to Earth revealed an irregular heartbeat during the mission.[64]
  • Served as CAPCOM for the Apollo 16 landing, talking Duke and Young through their antenna problem.[59]
Why it matters: Radio telemetry carried more than voices: it carried the crew’s heartbeats.
Alfred Worden · Command Module Pilot
Apollo 15 CMP aboard Endeavour (7 February 1932 – 18 March 2020)
  • On each return from behind the Moon he greeted Earth in a different language.[65]
  • Made the first deep-space spacewalk, of about 38 minutes, on the way home.[65]
  • On 1 August 1971, when W4HHK and K2RIW heard voice from Apollo 15’s command module in lunar orbit, Scott and Irwin were on the surface — Worden was alone aboard Endeavour.[46][63]
Why it matters: His is almost certainly the voice two radio amateurs picked up on their own dishes.
Apollo 16 — Casper and Orion
Launched 16 April 1972; landed 21 April; splashed down 27 April
John Young · Commander
Apollo 16 commander (24 September 1930 – 5 January 2018)
  • Veteran of Gemini 3, Gemini 10 and Apollo 10.[66]
  • Apollo 16’s landing was nearly held up by a degraded S-band link after the LM’s steerable antenna failed; the crew described it in their 1972 debrief.[59]
Why it matters: A communications problem, documented by the crew themselves, is the opposite of a stage-managed script.
Ken Mattingly · Command Module Pilot
Apollo 16 CMP aboard Casper (17 March 1936 – 31 October 2023)
  • Removed from Apollo 13 days before launch because of measles exposure.[67]
  • Detected a fault in the service propulsion system’s backup gimbal that delayed the Apollo 16 landing by about six hours.[59]
Why it matters: Apollo 16 command-module traffic was among the signals W4HHK and K2RIW reported receiving.
Tony England · W0ORE
Apollo 16 EVA CAPCOM; ham astronaut on Spacelab 2 (born 15 May 1942)
  • Selected as a scientist-astronaut in 1967; on the Apollo 13 support crew, he helped develop the improvised carbon-dioxide scrubber procedure.[68]
  • CAPCOM for Apollo 16’s moonwalks — the voice talking to Young and Duke on the surface.[68]
  • On STS-51F in 1985 he made about 130 amateur contacts and sent ten slow-scan television pictures — AMSAT credits him as the first to send SSTV from orbit.[68]
Why it matters: A licensed ham was talking to men on the Moon.
Apollo 17 — America and Challenger
Launched 7 December 1972; landed 11 December
Gene Cernan · Commander
Apollo 17 commander, last person to walk on the Moon (14 March 1934 – 16 January 2017)
  • Flew Snoopy on Apollo 10.[69]
  • His last words on the surface included “as I take man’s last step from the surface” and “Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.”[69]
Why it matters: The last voice from the lunar surface, carried by the same Collins-integrated system as the first.
Harrison Schmitt · Lunar Module Pilot
Apollo 17 LM pilot (born 3 July 1935)
  • The only professional scientist to walk on the Moon; later a US senator (1977–83).[69]
Why it matters: A geologist’s running commentary from the surface is the kind of unscripted detail a studio could not produce.

7 — The ground crews: Australia, Goldstone and Houston

On 21 July 1969 (Australian time) three stations were receiving the moonwalk television: Goldstone in California, Honeysuckle Creek near Canberra, and the Parkes radio telescope in central New South Wales.[7] Aldrin switched on the TV at 12:54:00 pm AEST; Armstrong stepped down at 12:56:20 pm.[70] Honeysuckle Creek supplied the first pictures; 8 minutes 51 seconds into the broadcast Houston switched to Parkes for the rest of the 2½-hour telecast.[21]

Honeysuckle Creek, ACT
The station that sent the world Armstrong’s first step
Tom Reid · Station Director
Director of Honeysuckle Creek, 1967–70 (14 March 1927 – 2 October 2010)
  • Earlier worked at Woomera and directed Orroral Valley; after Honeysuckle he directed the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex until 1988.[71]
  • Hosted Prime Minister John Gorton at the station on 21 July 1969 — Gorton visited Honeysuckle Creek, not Parkes, despite what The Dish implies.[71][72]
  • Awarded the MBE and NASA’s Public Service Medal.[71]
Why it matters: He ran the station that put the first step on the world’s screens.
Mike Dinn · Deputy Director
Deputy Director, Honeysuckle Creek, for Apollo 7 to 13
  • Born in Bradford, England; took the role in 1967 and has called Apollo 11 the highlight of his career.[73]
  • Awarded the OAM for service to engineering, particularly deep-space tracking.[73]
Why it matters: One of the engineers who made sure the station was ready when the flight plan changed.
Ed von Renouard · Senior Video Technician
Ran Honeysuckle Creek’s scan-converter console on 21 July 1969
  • Emigrated from Germany in 1953, aged 21.[74]
  • First person to see the lunar TV signal at Honeysuckle; when the picture came up inverted, he flipped a toggle switch fitted weeks earlier to set it the right way up.[74]
  • His private Super 8 film of the station monitors was rediscovered in 2005.[74]
  • Died in London in December 2023.[74]
Why it matters: The first human hands on the first pictures from the Moon belonged to a technician in the ACT.
Hamish Lindsay · Technician and historian
NASA tracking technician at Muchea, Carnarvon and Honeysuckle Creek
  • Joined the NASA programme in 1963 at Muchea, near Perth, then worked at Carnarvon for Gemini before moving to Honeysuckle Creek, where he stayed until it closed in 1981.[75]
  • Author of Tracking Apollo to the Moon.[75]
Why it matters: A Western Australian career in tracking, and the historian who wrote much of it down.
John Saxon · Operations Supervisor
Main operations console, Honeysuckle Creek, for every Apollo mission
  • Born in London in 1935; worked the main station operations console for every Apollo mission, and later became Operations Manager at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex.[76]
  • On landing day, computer technician Bryan Sullivan alerted him that the flight plan had changed and the moonwalk would start early.[73]
Why it matters: Station operations are where a changed flight plan becomes a ready antenna.
Parkes, NSW
The 64-metre radio telescope that carried most of the moonwalk
John Bolton · Director
Director of the Australian National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Parkes (1922–1993)
  • Born in Sheffield; directed the observatory from 1961 to 1981.[77]
  • During the moonwalk he operated the feed rotator himself.[70]
Why it matters: A radio astronomer at the controls of the dish that carried most of the moonwalk to the world.
Robert Taylor · NASA Operations Manager
Leader of the NASA team at Parkes
  • Arrived at Parkes with his NASA team on 23 June 1969; the National Archives of Australia describes him as NASA Operations Manager in Australia.[78]
  • Told Bolton when the TV signal was acquired.[70]
Why it matters: NASA’s man inside an Australian scientific observatory.
Neil “Fox” Mason · Telescope driver
Parkes telescope operator (1934–2017)
  • In control of the Parkes telescope during the Apollo 11 moonwalk; Bolton would not let him take his eyes off the controls to watch.[79]
  • Two gusts of wind above 110 km/h struck the dish that afternoon; the telescope was being driven well outside its normal limits.[70][21]
  • Worked at Parkes from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s. Technician Denis Gill sat beside him at the control desk.[79][70]
Why it matters: He kept the dish on the Moon while the wind tried to push it off.
John Sarkissian · Operations Scientist
CSIRO Parkes operations scientist and Apollo historian
  • Searching for the missing SSTV tapes since the late 1990s; his May 2006 report prompted NASA’s formal search.[80]
  • Research and technical adviser on the film The Dish, and its telescope operator.[80]
  • On the 2006 Perth find: these were not the tapes being sought.[40]
Why it matters: The man who started the official search for the tapes hoax believers say never existed.
A note on The Dish
Rob Sitch’s 2000 film is affectionate and well loved, but it is fiction. No power failure occurred, the film leaves out Honeysuckle Creek, and the Prime Minister actually visited Honeysuckle Creek.[72] Some hoax arguments draw on the film’s dramatisation rather than the record.
Goldstone and Houston
The American end of the chain
Bill Wood · USB Lead Engineer
Apollo Unified S-Band lead engineer at Goldstone, California
  • Kept the only known Polaroid photograph of the moonwalk taken from Goldstone’s monitors.[81]
  • Researched records for NASA’s missing-tapes search, and annotated the 1965 USB conference proceedings that document Collins Radio’s role.[82][19]
  • Settled the 2006 Perth story: the tapes were “neither lost nor of the Moon landing.”[40]
Why it matters: An engineer from inside the network, setting the record straight on both Collins and the tapes.
Gene Kranz · Flight Director
Apollo 11 flight director for the landing, White Team (born 17 August 1933)
  • Led the White Team on shift for the lunar landing; Glynn Lunney’s Black Team and Cliff Charlesworth’s Green Team covered other phases.[83][58]
  • Later acknowledged, with NASA’s Dr David Williams, that the original Apollo 11 telemetry tapes were missing.[8]
Why it matters: The flight director whose team brought Eagle down through the data dropouts.
The tapes team
The engineers who went looking
Richard Nafzger · Search Team Leader
Goddard Space Flight Center engineer
  • At 28 he oversaw TV processing at the tracking sites during Apollo 11.[82][84]
  • Led the three-year search for the original slow-scan tapes and its final report (November 2009).[82]
  • Announced in July 2009 that there was an “inescapable conclusion” that the tapes had been erased and reused.[84]
  • Accepted a 2009 Philo T. Farnsworth Emmy alongside Buzz Aldrin.[84]
Why it matters: The man who answered the “lost tapes” question — with a conclusion nobody at NASA enjoyed.
Stan Lebar · Westinghouse
Program manager for the Apollo lunar TV camera
  • Led the search at the Washington National Records Center, tracing more than 140,000 tapes that had been checked out between 1979 and 1985 and returned to Goddard.[82][85]
  • Died of cardiac arrest on 23 December 2009, aged 84.[86]
Why it matters: The man who built the camera spent his last years looking for its original pictures.
Colin Mackellar · Historian
Apollo historian for the Honeysuckle Creek website
  • Has documented Australia’s role in Apollo since 2002 and was a member of the tapes search team.[87][82]
  • Recovered Ed von Renouard’s Super 8 film in 2005.[74]
Why it matters: Much of what is known about the Australian end of the chain is known because he collected it.

8 — The lost tapes, explained

The Apollo 11 camera sent a slow-scan picture: monochrome, 10 frames per second, 320 lines. The tracking stations converted it in real time to broadcast television, and that converted picture is what the world saw and what survives. As a backup, the stations also recorded the raw slow-scan signal on one-inch telemetry tapes — at Goldstone, Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes.[7][80] Those backups are the “lost tapes.”

NASA’s search ran for three years. Its conclusion: the tapes had been shipped to Goddard Space Flight Center and, in the early 1980s, erased and reused during a severe shortage of data tape.[7][84] The best surviving broadcast copies were restored by Lowry Digital and released in 2009.[7]

What the lost tapes do and do not prove
They prove that NASA’s record-keeping in the 1970s and 80s was poor. They do not prove the moonwalk was faked: the broadcast was received live by three stations on two continents and seen by hundreds of millions, the Perth tapes were science data from a Carnarvon recording, and the independent radio receptions in section 5 never depended on NASA’s tapes at all. Even Arcetri lost its own Apollo tapes in an office move.[40][5]

9 — Fact check: six hoax claims against the radio record

Hoax claim 1
“The voices and TV were faked in a studio or relayed from a spacecraft in Earth orbit.”
The radio record
Independent receivers pointed at the Moon picked up Apollo voices: Baysinger in Louisville and the Arcetri Observatory in 1969, Wilson and Knadle in 1971, Grahn and Flagg in 1972, with Bochum following every mission.[4][5][9][48][6] Baysinger’s signal disappeared when his antenna left the Moon.[4]
✗ FALSE
Hoax claim 2
“There’s no radio delay in the conversations.”
The radio record
The round-trip delay is present in the real-time recordings; some documentaries edit it out for time. Claims that the delay was only half a second are untrue.[8] Baysinger heard voices 5–10 seconds before the TV pictures — the extra lag of the broadcast chain.[4]
✗ FALSE
Hoax claim 3
“Parkes was ordered to stand down before the moonwalk.”
The radio record
The moonwalk started earlier than planned after the landing; Parkes covered almost all of it and supplied the world’s pictures from 8 minutes 51 seconds onward.[8][21]
✗ MISLEADING
Hoax claim 4
“NASA lost the tapes, so there was nothing to keep.”
The radio record
The missing items are backup recordings of the raw slow-scan signal, erased and reused in the early 1980s. The live broadcast was received by three stations and survives; it was restored in 2009.[7][82]
✗ NON SEQUITUR
Hoax claim 5
“The tapes found in Perth in 2006 expose a cover-up.”
The radio record
They were copies of Carnarvon-recorded data from Brian O’Brien’s Apollo 11 dust experiment, brought to Perth by O’Brien himself in 1971 — “neither lost nor of the Moon landing.”[40][39]
✗ FALSE
Hoax claim 6
“Even the companies can’t agree who carried Armstrong’s words.”
The radio record
Motorola built the S-band transponders and transceivers; Collins Radio integrated the system, held the subcontract under which Motorola worked on the command module, built the LM’s S-band signal processor and the command module’s power amplifier, and supplied much of the ground network; RCA built the backpack radios.[16][1][15][10][11] Every claim is true at its own level of the same chain.
✗ ALL TRUE — IT WAS A CHAIN

10 — Timeline

Date Event
25 Jun 1964 Carnarvon Tracking Station opens.[3]
14 Jul 1964 Goddard awards the Unified S-Band ground-system contract to Collins Radio.[18]
1965 Carnarvon’s 30-foot antenna structure ships on 18 June; Collins Signal reports Collins designing, building and installing the USB ground stations, Carnarvon included; Carnarvon’s USB staff train at Collins Radio in Dallas from July.[2][3]
Dec 1968 Michael Collins, as CAPCOM, gives Apollo 8 its “Go for TLI.”[56]
16 Jul 1969 Apollo 11 launches; Carnarvon sends the “GO for TLI” command.[3]
20–21 Jul 1969 Eagle lands; moonwalk received at Goldstone, Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes; Baysinger (W4EJA) and Arcetri listen independently.[53][4][5]
23 Jul 1969 Courier-Journal publishes Rutherford’s report of Baysinger’s reception.[31]
1971 O’Brien brings Carnarvon-recorded EASEP data tapes to Perth.[39]
1 Aug 1971 W4HHK and K2RIW hear Apollo 15’s command module from lunar orbit.[46]
Dec 1972 Grahn and Flagg receive Apollo 17’s command module near Gainesville.[48]
Dec 1971 With North American Rockwell holding control, Arthur Collins resigns from the company he founded.[23]
1973 Skylab uses Collins equipment for astronaut-to-Earth communication; the Rockwell merger is approved on 2 November.[24][23]
1974–75 Carnarvon station closes.[33][3]
Early 1980s Raw Apollo 11 slow-scan backup tapes erased and reused at Goddard.[7]
Dec 1983 Owen Garriott, W5LFL, makes the first amateur contacts from space.[60]
9 Sep 2002 Buzz Aldrin punches hoax proponent Bart Sibrel.[55]
May 2006 John Sarkissian’s report prompts NASA’s formal tapes search.[80]
1 Nov 2006 Cosmos reports the Perth tapes discovery.[7]
Jul–Nov 2009 NASA announces the tapes were erased; restored footage released; final report issued.[84][82]
Jun 2012 Buzz Aldrin opens the Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum.[37]

11 — Summary: what the hoax gets wrong about radio

The Committee of 300 post ended by naming the people who built a myth. This one ends the other way round: by naming the people who built, ran and checked a real radio link to the Moon — and noting what that link means for the hoax.

  • Radio is directional and physical. Signals that fade when an antenna leaves the Moon came from the Moon. Several unconnected stations on three continents found exactly that.
  • The chain was too big to fake. Collins Radio, Motorola, RCA, Raytheon, Blaw-Knox, JPL, Goddard, the CSIRO, the Australian Department of Supply, AWA and hundreds of individual engineers each held a piece of it. Many of them are named above.
  • The “lost tapes” were backups. The broadcast was received live, the backups were erased by bureaucratic carelessness, and the Western Australian find was science data recorded at Carnarvon.
  • Western Australia was in the chain. A station on the Gascoyne coast, equipped under the Collins contract and staffed by Collins-trained operators, sent Apollo 11 on its way to the Moon and recorded the first data from experiments on its surface.
Bottom line
The moon-hoax theory has to explain away a Collins-integrated radio system, three tracking stations on two continents, a Western Australian station that sent the “GO for TLI,” and radio amateurs who heard the astronauts on equipment built from surplus parts and chicken wire. It never has.

Notes and References

  1. L. Jeromin and D. Michelson, “Milestone-Proposal: Apollo Unified S-Band Communications System, 1969,” IEEE Milestones Wiki — Collins “chosen as the Unified S-Band systems integrator”; Motorola’s Scottsdale division chosen to design and build the transponder. ieeemilestones.ethw.org ↩
  2. Collins Signal, Issue 58, Vol. 13-3 (Winter 1965), pp. 6–9, reproduced at arthurcollins.org — “Design, construction and installation of the ground stations is being performed by Collins Radio Company,” with Carnarvon among the 30-foot sites. arthurcollins.org ↩
  3. Engineers Australia, Carnarvon Tracking Station — Nomination for an Engineering Heritage International Marker (v3, 28 February 2012) — opening on 25 June 1964; the “GO for TLI” command; EASEP activation; peak staff of 220; USB staff trained at Collins Radio Company, Dallas, from July 1965. engineersaustralia.org.au (PDF) ↩
  4. Christopher Graney, “Eavesdropping on Apollo 11,” ARRL — Baysinger’s receiver, horn antenna, 35-minute recording, and his interview by Collins Radio. arrl.org ↩
  5. Niccolò Bucciantini, MEDIA INAF (16 July 2019); La Nazione (16 July 2019); G. Comoretto, Il Colle di Galileo 12(1), 2023, p. 37 (the Microdyne receiver). media.inaf.it · lanazione.it · fupress.net (PDF) ↩
  6. Wikipedia, “Heinz Kaminski” (1921–2002) — the Bochum 20-metre dish installed in 1967, “with which all Apollo missions were followed.” en.wikipedia.org ↩
  7. Wikipedia, “Apollo 11 missing tapes” — SSTV format (10 frames per second, 320 lines), recording sites, erasure and reuse, Lowry Digital restoration, and the 2006 Cosmos report. en.wikipedia.org ↩
  8. Wikipedia, “Moon landing conspiracy theories” — hoax claims about radio delay, Parkes and the missing tapes; third-party tracking; polling (Gallup 1999; Ipsos for C-SPAN 2019). en.wikipedia.org ↩
  9. Wikipedia, “Unified S-band” — developed by NASA/JPL and MIT Lincoln Laboratory, ground network managed by Goddard; CSM downlink 2287.5 MHz, uplink 2106.40625 MHz; voice subcarriers 30 kHz up and 1.25 MHz down; the W4HHK/K2RIW receptions and the QST citation. en.wikipedia.org ↩
  10. “Communications from the Moon,” Electronics World, August 1969 (RF Cafe) — RCA managed LM communications design and built the VHF sets and extravehicular (backpack) radios; Collins Radio supplied the S-band signal processor, Motorola the S-band transceivers, Raytheon the power amplifier and Dalmo-Victor the steerable antenna. rfcafe.com ↩
  11. Motorola Solutions, press release, 2 September 2019 — says Armstrong’s words were delivered via Motorola’s S-band transponder and that Motorola supplied Armstrong’s backpack antenna. motorolasolutions.com ↩
  12. NASA TN D-6974, Apollo Experience Report — Lunar Module Communications System (September 1972) — spacewalk voice went by VHF to the LM, “where it was processed and relayed to the MSFN,” the signal processor feeding the 1.25 MHz voice subcarrier to the S-band transceiver. nasa.gov (PDF) ↩
  13. NASA SP-4205, Chariots for Apollo, ch. 6-7 — Grumman contracted RCA for the lunar module’s communications, with “communications gear… purchased from Collins Radio and Motorola in the same manner.” hq.nasa.gov ↩
  14. North American Rockwell, Apollo CSM subcontractor list — “Collins Radio Co. Cedar Rapids, Iowa — Communications and data subsystems — $130,317,000.” nasa.gov (PDF) ↩
  15. Collins Signal, Fall 1966, reproduced at arthurcollins.org — “In the Block II C & D system, Collins designed and is manufacturing the audio center, HF transceiver, pre-modulation processor, VHF recovery beacon and S-band power amplifier,” with the USB equipment by Motorola, VHF/AM transceiver by RCA, PCM telemetry by Radiation Inc. and data storage by Leach; photograph of Collins engineers Sherrill L. Zimmerman and R. D. Carter on system test. arthurcollins.org ↩
  16. George Whitehead, “First-Hand: Apollo S-Band Communications,” Engineering and Technology History Wiki — Collins’s “major subcontract for Apollo Spacecraft Communications” under North American Aviation; the USB transponder “subcontracted by Collins to Motorola.” ethw.org ↩
  17. Goddard Space Flight Center, Kalil and Wigand, X-834-68-299 (July 1968) — the Unified S-Band System “at 14 land stations plus the network test and training facility”; Collins Signal, Spring 1969 — eleven 30-foot and three 85-foot stations; NASA, Apollo 11 MSFN post-mission report (station list including CRO). ntrs.nasa.gov (PDF) · arthurcollins.org · nasa.gov (PDF) ↩
  18. NASA SP-87 (July 1965), full text — Hightower: the network “will employ ten 30-foot and three 85-foot diameter steerable antennas”; Varson: “GSFC awarded the USB system contract to the Collins Radio Company on July 14, 1964,” the 30-foot antenna structures built by Blaw-Knox under subcontract to Collins and shipped to Carnarvon on 18 June 1965, and Collins “responsible for integrating the USB on site” at the 85-foot stations. ab9il.net (PDF) ↩
  19. NASA SP-87: Proceedings of the Apollo Unified S-Band Conference (July 1965), with notes by retired Goldstone engineer Bill Wood, hosted at honeysucklecreek.net — Collins developed “nearly all of the remainder of the USB system” and installed the equipment; 26-metre antennas by Blaw-Knox; power amplifiers by Energy Systems; receiver-exciters and ranging by JPL. honeysucklecreek.net ↩
  20. CSIRO Parkes, “Parkes communications” — PMG microwave links, OTC, and Bendix and RCA scan-converter work at Parkes. parkes.atnf.csiro.au ↩
  21. Australian Space Agency, “Australia’s historic role in space” — Carnarvon’s go/no-go for leaving Earth orbit; Honeysuckle Creek’s first pictures; the switch to Parkes 8 minutes 51 seconds in; around 700 people supporting NASA in Australia; an estimated 600 million viewers. space.gov.au ↩
  22. Wikipedia, “Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station” — credits NASA’s Charlie Goodman with selecting which station’s TV feed went out. en.wikipedia.org ↩
  23. Jean Florman, “Collins, Arthur Andrew,” Biographical Dictionary of Iowa; Wikipedia, “Arthur A. Collins”; Armstrong Perry, “Riding the Short Waves,” Radio Age, November 1925; University of Iowa Libraries, Collins Radio Company records (finding aid); Collins Aerospace Museum timeline; arthurcollins.org, “Philosophy.” BDI · Wikipedia · Radio Age 1925 · UI Libraries · museum timeline · arthurcollins.org ↩
  24. Wikipedia, “Rockwell Collins” — Collins equipment used on Mercury, Gemini and Apollo (citing KCRG, 19 July 2019); Skylab’s astronaut-to-Earth link used Collins equipment; Collins bought by Rockwell International in 1973 after financial difficulties. en.wikipedia.org ↩
  25. Collins Signal, Issue 47 (1962), reproduced at arthurcollins.org — the Apollo Project Office in Cedar Rapids headed by Dr S. E. Watson, with R. J. Pierce as technical director and antenna and ground-support studies at the Dallas Division. arthurcollins.org ↩
  26. Ken Shirriff, teardowns of an Apollo premodulation processor (“built by Collins Radio in 1966”) and S-band power amplifier, righto.com (2021–22). righto.com · righto.com ↩
  27. Sky & Telescope, “How Earth saw Apollo 11’s first steps” — Houston kept Goldstone’s voice downlink while switching TV sources. skyandtelescope.org ↩
  28. Bruce Aune, “From Iowa to the Moon: Collins Radio’s impact on the moon landing,” KCRG, 18 July 2019. kcrg.com ↩
  29. Collins Signal, Issue 69, Vol. 17-2 (1969), “Collins’ Role in U.S. Space Communications,” reproduced at arthurcollins.org — Collins as prime contractor to Goddard for the USB ground network. arthurcollins.org ↩
  30. Photograph caption, “Collins Radio Unified S-Band Project Director George F. Mansur,” in the NASA SP-87 materials at honeysucklecreek.net. honeysucklecreek.net ↩
  31. Christopher Graney, “Lunar Eavesdropping: Two Men, a Radio, and Apollo 11,” Parts I and II, Vatican Observatory (30 June and 7 July 2018); “A Backyard Radio Telescope for Apollo” (2021). Part I · Part II · Backyard telescope ↩
  32. KCRG, “TV9 Rewind: Collins Radio’s role in the Apollo 11 mission” (18 July 2025, rebroadcasting 1989 interviews); Iowa Public Radio, “Iowa’s Apollo Connection”; Corridor Business Journal on the Collins documentaries. kcrg.com · iowapublicradio.org · corridorbusiness.com ↩
  33. Wikipedia, “Carnarvon Tracking Station” — location, 1963–1975 service, FPQ-6 radar, “the prime link for the last hours of re-entry,” closure and the Engineers Australia heritage marker. en.wikipedia.org ↩
  34. Australian Department of Supply, Carnarvon Tracking Station (booklet, undated) — Department of Supply station director, operations contracted to AWA, about 180 staff, 9-metre (30-foot) USB antenna. Hosted at honeysucklecreek.net. honeysucklecreek.net (PDF) ↩
  35. Bendix Field Engineering Corporation history site, MSFN station list — “CARNARVON, AUSTRALIA – CRO (ACRO)”, “30 Foot Dual USB System.” bfec.us ↩
  36. CarnarvonSpace wiki, “Roles of NASA and OTC stations” — Carnarvon gave backup support to Apollo 11 for the latter part of the moonwalk and received direct TV once the Moon rose. carnarvonspace.com ↩
  37. WA TV History, Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum opening by Buzz Aldrin, June 2012. watvhistory.com ↩
  38. Curtin University, “Remembering Paul Dench” (2020); The Space Review on Carnarvon and Apollo (Dench and Gregg, 2010); Engineers Australia nomination (above). curtin.edu.au · thespacereview.com ↩
  39. Wikipedia, “Brian O’Brien (space scientist)” (27 February 1934 – 7 August 2020); Yahoo News on the tapes coming to Perth in 1971 when he became the first head of the WA Environment Protection Authority. en.wikipedia.org · au.news.yahoo.com ↩
  40. Reprint of Cosmos (Carmelo Amalfi, “Lost Moon landing tapes discovered,” 1–3 November 2006) — Curtin University physics building; Brian O’Brien and John de Laeter; EASEP dust-detector data. SPACE.com (Leonard David, 3 November 2006) and collectSPACE describe the tapes as copies of one-inch tapes recorded at Carnarvon; Bill Wood: “neither lost nor of the Moon landing.” Reported tape counts vary from “up to 100” to 177. arcane.org · space.com · collectspace.com · uwa.edu.au ↩
  41. Marnie McAllister, “Through crackly transmission, these two eavesdropped on Apollo 11 landing,” Crux, 21 July 2019. cruxnow.com ↩
  42. Glenn Zorpette, “Apollo communications,” IEEE Spectrum, 25 March 2022. spectrum.ieee.org ↩
  43. “Apollo S-band” (mirror of ab9il.net, author not named) — Baysinger on VHF channel B, 259.7 MHz; Wilson and Knadle on Apollo 15 and 16; the University of Florida dish for Apollo 17; Bochum. ed-thelen.org ↩
  44. AMSAT-UK, “Amateur Radio on BBC show Between the Ears – Space Ham” (19 January 2013). amsat-uk.org ↩
  45. Obituary of Paul Wilson, W4HHK (ARRL, December 1999), reproduced on a memorial geocache page; Réseau des Émetteurs Français EME history (first 2304 MHz EME contact, 19 October 1970). geocaching.com · r-e-f.org (PDF) ↩
  46. Wikipedia, “Third-party evidence for Apollo Moon landings” — independent receptions including W4HHK/K2RIW (Apollo 15, 1 August 1971) and Bochum. en.wikipedia.org ↩
  47. ARRL News, “Well-known VHF-UHF-microwave enthusiast and mentor Dick Knadle, K2RIW, SK” (April 2020); ARRL directors’ list notice, 27 April 2020. arrl.org · reflector.arrl.org ↩
  48. KTH, staff profile of Sven Grahn; Moon Hoax Debunked (Paolo Attivissimo et al.), “Voices from the Moon received directly”; Christopher Graney, Vatican Observatory, 20 July 2019. kth.se · moonhoaxdebunked · vaticanobservatory.org ↩
  49. NASA Radio JOVE newsletter, May 2011 (Richard Flagg, RF Associates). radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov ↩
  50. Salisbury and Fernald, letter in Nature 234, 95 (12 November 1971) — reception of Apollo 15’s command module radio. nature.com (PDF) ↩
  51. Apollo 11 Spacelog, mission operations (four CAPCOMs on shifts across three flight-control teams); Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, “Ground crew and CAPCOM.” spacelog.org · airandspace.si.edu ↩
  52. Wikipedia, “Neil Armstrong.” en.wikipedia.org ↩
  53. Wikipedia, “Apollo 11”; Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, “One Small Step” and “Landing” (apollojournals.org mirror). Apollo 11 · ALSJ: One Small Step · ALSJ: Landing ↩
  54. Wikipedia, “Bruce McCandless II”; ALSJ, Apollo 11 post-landing and “One Small Step.” en.wikipedia.org · ALSJ post-landing ↩
  55. Wikipedia, “Buzz Aldrin”; History.com, “Buzz Aldrin punches moon landing conspiracy theorist Bart Sibrel”; Space Today, 21 September 2002 (no charges filed). en.wikipedia.org · history.com · spacetoday.net ↩
  56. Wikipedia, “Michael Collins (astronaut)”; NASA, “50 Years Ago: Apollo 8, You Are Go for TLI.” en.wikipedia.org · nasa.gov ↩
  57. Nancy Atkinson, “In Their Own Words: Apollo Astronauts Say We Went to the Moon,” Universe Today, 7 November 2008 (quoting the film In the Shadow of the Moon). universetoday.com ↩
  58. Wikipedia, “Charles Duke”; Apollo Flight Journal, Apollo 11 Day 5; ALSJ, Apollo 16 landing. en.wikipedia.org · AFJ Day 5 · ALSJ Apollo 16 ↩
  59. Wikipedia, “Apollo 16”; ALSJ, Apollo 16 landing (steerable-antenna failure). en.wikipedia.org · ALSJ ↩
  60. collectSPACE obituary of Owen Garriott (15 April 2019); Apollo 11 Spacelog; Wikipedia, “Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment”; AMSAT bulletin board tribute (April 2019). collectspace.com · spacelog.org · SAREX · amsat.org ↩
  61. Wikipedia, “Ronald Evans (astronaut)”; ALSJ, Apollo 11 lunar liftoff. en.wikipedia.org · ALSJ liftoff ↩
  62. Wikipedia, “David Scott.” en.wikipedia.org ↩
  63. Wikipedia, “Apollo 15”; ALSJ, Apollo 15 close-out (hammer and feather). en.wikipedia.org · ALSJ ↩
  64. Wikipedia, “James Irwin.” en.wikipedia.org ↩
  65. Wikipedia, “Alfred Worden.” en.wikipedia.org ↩
  66. Wikipedia, “John Young (astronaut).” en.wikipedia.org ↩
  67. Wikipedia, “Ken Mattingly.” en.wikipedia.org ↩
  68. Wikipedia, “Anthony W. England”; ALSJ, Apollo 16 crew page; AMSAT News Service. en.wikipedia.org · ALSJ · amsat.org ↩
  69. Wikipedia, “Apollo 17”, “Eugene Cernan” and “Harrison Schmitt.” Apollo 17 · Cernan · Schmitt ↩
  70. CSIROpedia, “Parkes radio telescope and the Apollo 11 Moon landing”; CSIRO Parkes Observatory, “One Giant Leap” — Bolton on the feed rotator, Mason at the controls, wind gusts above 110 km/h, Aldrin’s TV switch-on at 12:54:00 pm AEST and Armstrong’s step at 12:56:20 pm. CSIROpedia · parkes.atnf.csiro.au ↩
  71. Wikipedia, “Tom Reid (electrical engineer)”; honeysucklecreek.net, Tom Reid. en.wikipedia.org · honeysucklecreek.net ↩
  72. Wikipedia, “The Dish” (2000, dir. Rob Sitch) — notes that the film’s power failure did not happen, that it leaves out Honeysuckle Creek, and that Prime Minister Gorton visited Honeysuckle Creek, not Parkes. en.wikipedia.org ↩
  73. Governor-General of Australia, Michael Dinn OAM; Science and Media Museum blog (2019); National Museum of Australia, “Tracking Apollo” panel transcript (19 July 2019). gg.gov.au · scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk · nma.gov.au ↩
  74. Colin Mackellar, “Ed von Renouard’s Super 8 film” (ALSJ, 2005); Canberra Times obituary (22 December 2023). nasa.gov · canberratimes.com.au ↩
  75. ALSJ, Hamish Lindsay biography. nasa.gov ↩
  76. ALSJ, John Saxon biography; National Museum of Australia panel (above). nasa.gov ↩
  77. CSIROpedia, “Bolton, John Gatenby.” csiropedia.csiro.au ↩
  78. CSIRO Parkes, “Parkes operations”; National Archives of Australia learning resource on Parkes and the Moon landing. parkes.atnf.csiro.au · naa.gov.au ↩
  79. John Sarkissian, ATNF Daily Image obituary of Neil “Fox” Mason (1 June 2017); CSIRO Parkes Apollo 11 30th anniversary staff list. atnf.csiro.au · parkes.atnf.csiro.au ↩
  80. CSIRO, John Sarkissian staff page; “The Search for the Apollo 11 SSTV Tapes” (21 May 2006). parkes.atnf.csiro.au · SSTV search report ↩
  81. NASA final report (above); ALSJ, “Goldstone Polaroid”; collectSPACE (November 2006). nasa.gov ↩
  82. Richard Nafzger et al., The Apollo 11 Telemetry Data Recordings: A Final Report (NASA, November 2009) — search team members and roles. nasa.gov (PDF) ↩
  83. Wikipedia, “Gene Kranz” and “Apollo 11” (flight-control teams). en.wikipedia.org ↩
  84. SPACE.com, “NASA Erased First Moonwalk Tapes, But Restores Copies” (17 July 2009) and “NASA Emmy” (20 August 2009). space.com · space.com ↩
  85. David Kushner, “One Giant Screwup for Mankind,” Wired, January 2007. davidkushner.com ↩
  86. TV Technology, “Lunar Camera Creator Stan Lebar Dies at 84” (5 January 2010). tvtechnology.com ↩
  87. World Science Festival Brisbane, speaker profile of Colin Mackellar. worldsciencefestival.com.au ↩
Credits and Acknowledgements
This post rests on the work of historians and engineers who recorded the Apollo radio chain while its people were still alive to ask. Particular thanks to Christopher Graney, whose research rescued Larry Baysinger’s reception from microfilm; Colin Mackellar, Hamish Lindsay and Bill Wood of honeysucklecreek.net; John Sarkissian of CSIRO Parkes; Paul Dench and Alison Gregg for Carnarvon and Apollo; the volunteers of the Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum and the Bendix Field Engineering history site; the keepers of the Collins Signal archive at arthurcollins.org; the editors of the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal and Apollo Flight Journal; Paolo Attivissimo and colleagues at Moon Hoax: Debunked!; and INAF Arcetri.
And to the radio amateurs — W4EJA, W4HHK, K2RIW, W5LFL and W0ORE — who proved, with their own equipment, what an antenna pointed at the Moon can hear.
A note on sources. Every fact in this post is footnoted. Where sources disagree — on Carnarvon’s closing date, on the number of Perth tapes, on the year of W4HHK’s first Apollo monitoring — the disagreement is noted rather than resolved by guesswork. The make and model of Larry Baysinger’s receiver remain unknown; if you know, the author would love to hear from you. Corrections with sources are welcome and will be published.
Mike Peace VK6ADA
r-390a.net and foxtango.org Administrator
Conspiracy Files · vk6ada.com.au

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