NASA relied on 3 stations scattered around the world to communicate with its spacecraft. It used a station near Madrid, Spain to track the Apollo 11 launch, and continued to follow the mission from the other 2 deep space tracking stations, Honeysuckle Creek (also known as Tidbinbilla) in Australia and Goldstone, California.

The sites were built in the early 1960s to replace a mobile radio network first deployed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1958 to track Explorer 1, the first US satellite. NASA has a history of the entire deep space tracking network here and a photo album here.

More photos from the Deep Space Network’s early years are available on the website honeysucklecreek.net.

Photo: NASA

NASA relied on 3 stations scattered around the world to communicate with its spacecraft. It used a station near Madrid, Spain to track the Apollo 11 launch, and continued to follow the mission from the other 2 deep space tracking stations, Honeysuckle Creek (also known as Tidbinbilla) in Australia and Goldstone, California.

The sites were built in the early 1960s to replace a mobile radio network first deployed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1958 to track Explorer 1, the first US satellite. NASA has a history of the entire deep space tracking network here and a photo album here.

More photos from the Deep Space Network’s early years are available on the website honeysucklecreek.net.

Photo: NASA