Thomas Reid MBE (14 March 1927 – 2 October 2010) was the director of the

Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station The Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station was a NASA Earth stations in Australia, Earth station in Australia near Canberra. It was instrumental to the Apollo program. The station was opened in 1967 and closed in 1981. History Honeysuckle Creek wi ...

outside

Canberra Canberra ( ; ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the Federation of Australia, federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's list of cities in Australia, largest in ...

, Australia, which in July 1969 transmitted live television of

Neil Armstrong Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut and aerospace engineering, aeronautical engineer who, in 1969, became the Apollo 11#Lunar surface operations, first person to walk on the Moon. He was al ...

stepping onto the Moon to a world-wide audience of 600 million people.

Early years

Born in

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

, Reid served in the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

from 1944 to 1947 and then obtained a first-class honours degree in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

from the

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

winning the Howe Prize in Electrical Engineering. Migrating to

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

in 1952, Reid served for five years as an electrical lieutenant in the

Royal Australian Navy The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is the navy, naval branch of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The professional head of the RAN is Chief of Navy (Australia), Chief of Navy (CN) Vice admiral (Australia), Vice Admiral Mark Hammond (admiral), Ma ...

Space tracking career

Appointed officer-in-charge of

telemetry Telemetry is the in situ collection of measurements or other data at remote points and their automatic transmission to receiving equipment (telecommunication) for monitoring. The word is derived from the Greek roots ''tele'', 'far off', an ...

at the

Woomera Rocket Range The RAAF Woomera Range Complex (WRC) is a major Australian military and civil aerospace facility and operation located in South Australia, approximately north-west of Adelaide. The WRC is operated by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), a S ...

in 1958, Reid helped test British medium-range ballistic missiles. The following year, he was put in charge of Woomera’s RCA AN/FPS-16 Instrumentation Radar which tracked

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

Project Mercury Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Un ...

spacecraft. After leaving Woomera in 1962, Reid became a senior lecturer in electrical engineering at the

South Australian Institute of Technology The University of South Australia is a public research university based in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1991, it is the successor of the former South Australian Institute of Technology. Its main campuses along North Terrace are ...

. In 1964, he was appointed inaugural director of NASA's

Orroral Valley Tracking Station The Orroral Valley tracking station was an Earth stations in Australia, Earth station in Australia, supported Earth-orbiting satellites, as part of NASA's Spacecraft Tracking and Data Acquisition Network (STADAN). It was located approximatel ...

, south of Canberra. Because of management problems at the nearby Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, Reid was transferred there as director in 1967 to provide firm leadership. Honeysuckle’s role was to supply uplink and down link communications between

Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...

astronauts and mission control. Just before 1 pm on 21 July 1969,

AEST Australia uses three main time zones: Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST; UTC+10:00), Australian Central Standard Time (ACST; UTC+09:30) and Australian Western Standard Time (AWST; UTC+08:00). Time is regulated by the individual states a ...

, Honeysuckle’s 85-foot dish was providing backup to a 210-foot dish in Goldstone, California, including a backup TV link with the

Apollo Lunar Module The Apollo Lunar Module (LM ), originally designated the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), was the lunar lander spacecraft that was flown between lunar orbit and the Moon's surface during the United States' Apollo program. It was the first crewed sp ...

, ''Eagle''. Due to technical difficulties, Goldstone could not relay broadcast quality TV of

as he descended the ''Eagles ladder to the Moon’s surface. At the last minute, mission control switched over to Honeysuckle which transmitted to what was then the largest TV audience in history the footage of Armstrong stepping onto the Moon. In 1970, Reid became director of the nearby

Tidbinbilla Tracking Station The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC) is a earth station, satellite communication station, part of the Deep Space Network of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), located at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, Tidbinbilla in the Au ...

, which maintained communications with spacecraft travelling to the outer edges of the

Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Sola ...

and beyond. After overseeing communications with spacecraft from the

Pioneer Program The Pioneer programs were two series of United States lunar and planetary space probes. The first program, which ran from 1958 to 1960, unsuccessfully attempted to send spacecraft to orbit the Moon, successfully sent one spacecraft to fly by the ...

Mariner Program The Mariner program was conducted by the American space agency NASA to explore other planets. Between 1962 and late 1973, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) designed and built 10 robotic interplanetary probes named Mariner to explore the in ...

and

Voyager Program The Voyager program is an American scientific program that employs two interstellar probes, ''Voyager 1'' and ''Voyager 2''. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable planetary alignment to explore the two gas giants Jupiter ...

, Reid retired in 1988.

Honours and awards

For his work as a space tracker, Reid was appointed as a Member of the

Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

Appointed MBE: ''Supplement to the London Gazette'' 1 January 1970 : p.38
/ref> (MBE) in 1970 and in 1989 he was presented with the

NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal NASA's Exceptional Public Service Medal is a United States government award awarded to any non-Government individual or to an individual who was not a Government employee during the period in which the service was performed for sustained performa ...

Personal life

In 1952, Reid married Betty McKenna and they had four children. Following Betty's death in 1965, he married Margaret McLachlan. As Senator Reid, Margaret later went into politics, rising to become the first female president of the

Australian Senate The Senate is the upper house of the Bicameralism, bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the Australian House of Representatives, House of Representatives. The powers, role and composition of the Senate are set out in Chap ...

Note

This article is based almost completely on a book written by former politician

Andrew Tink Andrew Arnold Tink AM (born 13 July 1953) is a former Australian politician, having served as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for the Liberal Party from 1988 to 2007. He was in the shadow cabinet from 1995 until March 2006 ...

and published in 2018. Tink became a personal friend of Tom Reid and his family while Tink was a law student at the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

, Canberra, in the 1970s. The particulars of the book are as follows: *Andrew Tink: ''HONEYSUCKLE CREEK: The story of Tom Reid, a little dish and Neil Armstrong's first step'': NewSouth Publishing: (paperback): (ebook): (ebooks)

References

External links

Micro-Bio - Thomas Reid M.B.E.

A Tribute to the men and women of Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, Canberra, Australia
Parliament of Australia: Senate Hansard: Tribute by Senator Humphries to Thomas Reid MBE 16 November 2010
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reid, Tom 1927 births 2010 deaths Scottish emigrants to Australia Australian electrical engineers Alumni of the University of Glasgow Royal Australian Navy officers Engineers from Glasgow