Apollo 11 40th Anniversary Landing On The Moon

 

Stan Anderson with his wife Bette traveled to Australia for the 40th Anniversary celebration of the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon. The celebration took place in Canberra, Australia, from July 19, 2009 thru July 22, 2009. On the "Day of, Time of" banquet held on July 21, Stan brought greetings and congratulations from the ARIA Alumni.

In an email to Randy Losey, Stan Anderson states "At the “Day of, Time of” banquet Mike Dinn, the former Deputy Director at HSK during Apollo 11, was seated at the table next to me. I went over to Mike and said, “Mike, I’m sure that your folks had to come up with as many real-time solutions to problems as our ARIA people did that would have never met with the approval with the Standards and Procedures people.” Mike’s response, “You got that right, mate.” Lots went on behind the scenes that the world will never know. In the movie “The Wonder of It All” I believe it is Alan Bean who says, “If we don’t tell the story, soon there won’t be anybody left to do so.” I guess that gives each of us to impetus to document as many of the stories as we can."

At the former site of the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station an ARIA 328 Memorial Coin was placed in the time capsule along with a description of the ARIA program. The time capsule is 30 cm in diameter by 1.5m long stainless steel tube weighing approximately 100kg (~220 pounds). The cylinder was a hydraulic cylinder that was used on the 70 meter antenna at CDSCC. The time capsule will be opened on July 20, 2069.

The Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station was decommissioned in 1981 and the 26 meter antenna was moved to Tidbinbilla, Australia. The antenna was due to be decommissioned in August 2009, however, currently the antenna has been put in standby status.

For many years Colin Mackellar has kept the memory of the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station alive by devoting a web site to the tracking station. Over the years Colin has shared information about ARIA with Randy Losey to perserve the ARIA history. In appreciation, the ARIA 328 Memorial Foundation presented an ARIA 328 Memorial Coin, represented by Stan Anderson, at the Apollo 11 banquet to Colin. You can visit his site at HoneySuckleCreek.net.

On July 21, 2009 the Royal Australian Mint released a new 50 cent coin in recognition of the accomplishment of Apollo 11 landing on the moon.