Though Parkes' schools were holidays during the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, that didn't stop Parkes East Public School from joining in the celebrations.
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The school took the opportunity to have a space mufti day on their last day before the holidays and principal Michael Ostler was thrilled the students were still able to be involved in some way.
It was their small step towards recognising that 'Giant Leap'.
Students' imaginations ran wild, with some dressed as astronauts, some as stars, planets and even satellites, and others as aliens and characters from Star Wars.
There was even a student with a space jet pack and Buzz Lightyear 'flying' about.
Then were a number of students who proudly donned their Parkes Spacemen/Marist Rugby League Club uniforms featuring the astronaut logo.
Another Parkes school was involved in a different way.
Parkes Public School in the weeks before the anniversary had commenced a space theme for their STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Maths) lessons and classes.
Parkes had a special place in the Apollo 11 anniversary celebrations, with its radio telescope shooting to fame around the world when it beamed images of Neil Armstrong taking "one giant leap for mankind" on the moon on July 21, 1969.
It was a day their grandparents may recall as many sat around flickering black and white television sets in their classroom watching grainy images of man taking the first steps from the lunar landing module Eagle.
The students of Parkes East Public can be proud that the nearby radio telescope, affectionately known as The Dish, played a crucial role in getting those images to eager eyes across the world.
A total of 600 million people - 20 per cent of the world's population at the time - watched vision broadcast through the Parkes facility.
Parkes, along with tracking stations at Honeysuckle Creek in the ACT and Goldstone in California, were tasked with receiving signals simultaneously.
While the honour of carrying the first few minutes of images switched between Goldstone and Honeysuckle Creek, when the superior quality of the Parkes transmission was seen, the remainder of the two-and-a-half-hour broadcast was beamed out from the Parkes feed.
And, it was the children of Parkes back in 1969 who, along with the rest of Australia, could say they were the first to see Armstrong's historic first steps, due to the physics of signal delays as they travelled across the world.
The Parkes signal was split in Sydney between a feed to the ABC studios at Gore Hill for direct broadcast to Australians and to NASA headquarters at Houston for the international telecast.
The international transmission resulted in a 300 millisecond delay meaning Aussies saw that "one small step for man" 0.3 seconds before the rest of the world.
The Parkes Radio Telescope also held open days over the weekend to celebrate. Scenes from those celebrations can be found here - See thousands 'moon struck' on 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 at the Dish.
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