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

Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station (Honeysuckle Creek) was a NASA Earth station in Australia near Canberra, and was instrumental to the Apollo Program. The station was opened in 1967 and closed in 1981. History Honeysuckle Creek – with a ...

outside Canberra, 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 aeronautical engineer who became the first person to walk on the Moon in 1969. He was also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor. ...

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

Early years

Born in

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated pop ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to th ...

, Reid served in the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by Kingdom of England, English and Kingdom of Scotland, Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were foug ...

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

University of Glasgow , image = UofG Coat of Arms.png , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms Flag , latin_name = Universitas Glasguensis , motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita , ...

winning the Howe Prize in Electrical Engineering. Migrating to Australia in 1952, Reid served for five years as an electrical lieutenant in the

Royal Australian Navy The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is the principal naval force of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The professional head of the RAN is Chief of Navy (CN) Vice Admiral Mark Hammond AM, RAN. CN is also jointly responsible to the Minister of ...

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'', "remote", and ' ...

at the Woomera Rocket Range 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 agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...

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 U ...

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 (UniSA) is a public research university in the Australian state of South Australia. It is a founding member of the Australian Technology Network of universities, and is the largest university in South Australi ...

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

Orroral Valley Tracking Station The Orroral Valley tracking station, was Earth station in Australia, supported Earth-orbiting satellites, as part of NASA's Spacecraft Tracking and Data Acquisition Network (STADAN). It was located approximately 50 km south of Canberra, ...

, 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, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label=Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label= ...

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

, ''Eagle''. Due to technical difficulties, Goldstone could not relay broadcast quality TV of Neil Armstrong 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 satellite communication station, part of the Deep Space Network of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), located at Tidbinbilla in the Australian Capital Territory. Opened in 19 ...

, which maintained communications with space craft travelling to the outer edges of the solar system 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 exploration. The first program, which ran from 1958 to 1960, unsuccessfully attempted to send spacecraft to orbit the Moon, successfully sent one spacecraft to ...

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 i ...

and

Voyager Program The Voyager program is an American scientific program that employs two robotic interstellar probes, '' Voyager 1'' and '' Voyager 2''. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable alignment of Jupiter and Saturn, to fly near ...

, 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 contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established 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 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 performance th ...

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.

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 research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and ...

, 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