Based on a true story, The Dish recounts the emotions, drama and humor behind the four-day Apollo XI mission in July 1969 and the extraordinary role that Australia played in televising the historical lunar landing to the world. Inauspiciously located on a remote sheep farm in the rural town of Parkes, New South Wales, Australia, The Dish is a mammoth, 1000-ton radio telescope equal in size to a football field. In 1969, NASA intended to use the Australian telescope, the most powerful receiving
dish in the Southern Hemisphere, as a "back-up" to its prime receiver in Goldstone, California. But a last-minute change in the Apollo XI flight schedule change rendered the Goldstone telescopes ineffective, and the Aussie dish became NASAs only hope for conveying to the world mans first steps on the moon. |