The Dish

The Dish is a 2000 Australian film that tells the story of how the Parkes Observatory was used to relay the live television of man's first steps on the moon, during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. It was the top grossing film in Australia in 2000.

The radio telescope at Parkes, New South Wales, Australia, was used by NASA throughout the Apollo program to receive signals in the Southern Hemisphere, along with the NASA Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station near Canberra.

The film tells a somewhat fictionalised story of three Australian scientists engineers Neill, Harrington, Long and their American NASA representative Warburton . It had been decided quite late in the planning for Apollo 11 to include a television camera to broadcast the first steps on the Moon. Due to the timing of this, Australia would be the prime receiving station. The film tells of the three dealing with a variety of problems, from a power outage wiping their computer memory, to high winds that could cause the whole telescope to collapse. After the 11 crew decide to walk immediately after landing on the Moon, Parkes thinks they have lost their chance to be the prime receiving station. However, due to delays on the Moon and problems with Goldstone they achieve the distinction at the last minute.

Although based on true events, the film uses fictional characters and alters historical details for dramatic effect. NASA's Honeysuckle Creek and Goldstone stations both had the signal first, but Parkes' signal was used from soon after the beginning of the moon-walk. No power failure occurred, there was no friction with the NASA representatives of whom there were several, not just one , and Prime Minister John Gorton visited Honeysuckle Creek, not Parkes. They did however operate in very high winds at 60 degrees inclination, risking damage to the dish and even injury to themselves to keep the antenna pointed at the moon during the moonwalk.

Much of the film was shot on location the "cricket match" and "hayride" scenes were shot on the real dish and researchers often postponed experiments to position the dish for photography. 1 The set reconstructing the 1969 control room was extremely accurate, even down to small details like ashtrays. Some of the "props" were in fact original NASA equipment used during the Apollo 11 landing, left behind in Australia as they were too heavy to ship back. 1 Staff from that era expressed amazement at seeing the set they said it was like walking into a time warp.

The Dish was written by Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Jane Kennedy and Rob Sitch and directed by Sitch.