I'd like to know how exactly the tv transmission worked from the Apollo missions to Earth:

1: how revolutionary was the technology to transmit from the moon?
2: how did they receive it on Earth? Where were the receiving antennas? I mean, they had to be all around the Earth.
3: when and how did they turn on the camera of Apollo 11 that showed Neil and Buzz step off the LEM?
4: how did they program those later Apollo cameras that shot the LEM taking off from the Moon?

Well here's a good link:

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/csmtions.htm

1. But first off the technology itself wasn't revolutionary. Instead of radio transmissions leaking into space from earth the opposite was imposed and transmissions were pointed at earth.

2. They used the Deep Space Network of dishes placed around the world.

3. I don't know exactly but either Neil or Buzz flipped it on and let ground control take remote control of it or ground control flipped it on themselves.

4. Those cameras were controlled by ground control. The delay was only around 2 second round trip so the latency wasn't too bad.

Hope that helped.

This is where I step in and recommend the movie, The Dish. It covers a little about transmissions between the moon and earth. It's also just an overall good movie.

Btw, Omicron, nice user name

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"First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?" -- Hadden, Contact

I can bend minds with my spoon.

Thanks Trinity,

Out of all the usernames I have floating around I'm surprised I didn't think of this one yet...nor did anyone else for that matter hehe

The Apollo 11 egress was televised by a camera on their equipment pallet that unfolded from the side of the LM. Armstrong pulled a ring near the door that was connected to the pallet latch by a cable. When the pallet fell open, the camera sprung up on a spring-loaded staff. Aldrin turned it on from inside by closing its circuit breaker. Later, Armstrong took the camera off the pallet and put it on the tripod some distance from the LM.

Some of the technology was truly revolutionary, like the low-light vidicon (pickup) tube for seeing in shadow. That was actually classified military technology, unbeknownst even to some of the people who worked on it. Slow-scan television wasn't new, nor was the phase-locked loop.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/ has some good reads.

And more than you can digest at
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-TVdocs.html

Harald

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

And Jay's own web site has a wonderful description of why Apollo 11's lunar surface TV transmission was not too good in the quality department.