Tell us more about your role during the Apollo mission.During Apollo, I was Deputy Station Director , and in charge of Operations at the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station. Television of Armstrong’s first step via Honeysuckle was selected by Houston, and sent to the worldWhat was your favorite moment from the Apollo program?The highlight of Apollo for me was Apollo 11’s TV, but Apollo 8 was in many ways the most ambitious. Our tracking station came from relative obscurity to be a major communications participant. And of course Apollo 13 was a major, very demanding task.How did your work with NASA impact your career?Basically, space tracking WAS my career. It started with Surveyor in 1966. Then through all the Apollo missions. Then through the 80s and 90s as Deputy Director, and then Director of the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC). [I] retired on the 25th anniversary of Apollo 11. Astronaut John Young presented me with my retirement gift.
How did the Apollo program set the precedence for future human exploration?I fully expected Apollo to continue, and expand into lunar settlement, but this was not to be. But many of the achievements of Apollo flowed into everyday use, such as GPS.Learn more about how we are going forward to the Moon and Mars with the Artemis program.