We visit the Parkes Radio Telescope where the images of the 1969 moon walk were received

The Parkes Radio Telescope is Australia’s largest and most recognizable single dish radio telescope.

Parkes Radio Telescope

Astronomers use the Parkes Radio Telescope to measure the radio energy produced naturally by objects in the universe such as stars, galaxies and clouds of dust and gas. Occasionally the Parkes Telescope will assist space exploration missions by acting as a receiving station to receive radio transmissions from space craft but the main job remains astronomy.

Since its opening in October 1961, the 64m Parkes radio telescope has been an icon of Australian science. It was made famous for its reception of the television images of the first Moon walk in 1969. The fictional film 'The Dish' was loosely based on the real role that Parkes played in receiving the first video footage on the first Moon walk by the crew of Apollo 11 in 1969. It has contributed to other space missions including the Galileo probe to Jupiter and the various Mars missions in early 2004. Less well known is the crucial role Parkes played in rescuing the mission portrayed in Hollywood's Apollo 13. Parkes helped to monitor the feeble radio signals from the stricken spacecraft as the astronauts made their tortuous journey back to Earth.

Parkes has also starred in television commercials, documentaries and even a Korean romance movie.

The plan initially was to build the telescope within easy reach of Sydney. Various sites were investigated, as far out as the Blue Mountains, but rejected because they were too 'noisy'. Radio telescopes need to be sited well away from urban and industrial areas to stop radio interference from drowning out the faint signals from outer space.

A good case can be made that Parkes is the most successful scientific instrument ever built in Australia. Its first triumph was the discovery of quasars and on several occasions has held the record for the most distant object known in the Universe. The telescope also discovered interstellar magnetic fields that marshal millions of stars into the long spiral arms that form the Milky Way.

Parkes has discovered over half the known number of pulsars and has been a major player in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. With space tracking projects ranging from the NASA Apollo missions to the recent Cassini-Huygens probe, and contributing one of the top 10 astronomical discoveries in 2004, it easy to see that Parkes has had over 40 years as a world-class telescope.

The Parkes design proved so successful it was copied by telescope builders in several countries, including NASA in its worldwide network of dishes for tracking spacecraft.

It is unusual for any scientific instrument to last for 40 years. Parkes would have been mothballed years ago if it had not undergone a number of facelifts to keep it up to date. The surface of the dish has been re-laid with new precision panels and the host of instruments that detect, amplify, record, process and analyse the stream of radio signals from space have been constantly upgraded. The telescope is now a much more powerful instrument than it was in 1961. Recent upgrades, partly funded by NASA for Mars and deep space tracking purposes, have allowed the telescope to maintain its position as one of the world’s elite telescopes.

The observatory is well set up for visitors, with the on-site Visitors Discovery Centre providing everything Parkes and radio astronomy-related a visitor could want.

Aerial view of "The Telescope"

We visit Parkes Radio Telescope as part of our Tamworth Tour.