“Lunar Eavesdropping” quietly sat in the rolls of microfilmed Courier-Journal editions in the reference sections of (mostly Kentucky) libraries, awaiting rediscovery.

Then the story faded into the mists of time. Collins was impressed with Baysinger’s work. Rutherford finished the story with “Needless to say, the receiver worked to perfection Sunday night.”īaysinger’s accomplishment earned him some brief recognition - a meeting with the Collins Radio Company, which supplied the communications systems for the Apollo spacecraft. It briefly described the antenna used for the lunar eavesdropping project - a fully steerable 8 × 12 foot “corner horn” - and it briefly discussed the amazing sensitivity of the receiver, which Baysinger specially modified for the lunar eavesdropping project. Rutherford’s story briefly mentioned how Baysinger had been previously successful in constructing a device to detect radio signals from Jupiter and in tracking and reproducing pictures transmitted from Earth-orbiting satellites. 1 These 35 minutes included the time during which President Richard Nixon transmitted a message of congratulations to the astronauts. The story discussed how Baysinger recorded 35 minutes of conversation from VHF signals transmitted between astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins (he did not attempt to pick up the encoded S-band signals from the main Moon-Earth communication link). Rutherford opened the Courier story with “Thanks to some homemade electronic equipment, including a rebuilt 20 year old radio receiver from an Army tank (see Figure 2) and an antenna made of spare pieces of aluminum, nylon cord and chicken wire (see Figure 3 and 4), a small band of Louisvillians was able to ‘eavesdrop’ Sunday (July 20) night on the American astronauts’ conversation directly from the moon.” “Lunar Eavesdropping: Louisvillians hear moon walk talk on homemade equipment,” sporting Rutherford’s byline, appeared in the Wednesday, Jissue of that paper - front page of section B, the local news section (see Figure 1). Fortunately, his accomplishments were recorded by Glenn Rutherford, a young reporter for the Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal. He independently detected radio transmissions from the Apollo 11 astronauts on the lunar surface. In July of 1969 a ham radio operator and amateur radio-astronomer by the name of Larry Baysinger, W4EJA, accomplished an amazing feat. Chris nearly forgotten story of how a radio amateur successfully detected transmissions from the first men to land on the Moon.

Darkside downlink