It was lunchtime and we were visiting the Tidbinbilla Deep Space Communication Complex near Canberra. It's run by the CSIRO for NASA, and its job is to communicate with NASA's various space probes around the solar system.
It was particularly busy in the late 60s and early 70s, when Americans were commuting to and from the moon, bringing back moon rock specimens like the one in the display case. Also on display are some leftover astronaut food packages from the time, and don't they look disgusting!
Which brings me back to lunchtime. The cafe is called the Moon Rock Cafe, and some of their offerings were only marginally more appetising. We played safe, and had OK wraps and a salad, but the people on the next table left their sausage rolls almost untouched.
Overall it was a very enjoyable and informative visit. The visitor centre has space suits to try out, and shrunken versions of space rockets and moon capsules galore. Maybe it's relativity or something that causes them to come back so much smaller. Fabulous educational exhibits too on the many astronomical breakthroughs that have come out of space based observations.
And below is Voyager 2 broadcasting its pictures back to us from Uranus in 1986.
