When two astronauts blasted into space from US soil for the first time in nine years on the weekend one man tuned in to the coverage was Kangaroo Valley resident Mark Foster.
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The SpaceX flight to the international space station is another step in Elon Musk's mission to return to the moon.
And that is bringing back many great memories for Mr Foster who is excited by the prospect of more lunar landings.
"I watched the launch with great interest because it was like a blast from the past," he said.
These days Mr Foster and his wife Sue run a vineyard called Yarrawa Estate.
But back in the late 60's when the Apollo missions were getting close to landing astronauts on the moon he had just left the army.
"I was a radar technician. They were recruiting electronic technicians at the Tidbinbilla Tracking Station and recruited me to work on their receiver exciter systems".
Mr Foster will never forget the day Neil Armstrong took one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind 51 years ago.
"We didn't see the footage. All we saw was the signals coming down to our electronic equipment," he said.
"Tidbinbilla took some of that signal and Parkes took a bit as well. They were selected as having the best signal to process. But it was all pretty clean.
"Tidbinbilla duplicated Honeysuckle Creek. Both those tracking stations tracked the Apollo missions.
"Basically when the information came through the antenna it came to the receivers. The signals came from the dish at a really high frequency to the piece of equipment I looked after called the receiver exciter.
"The signal was then sent off to the telephone exchange at Deakin and then from there went under the ground and sea all the way to the United States".
Mr Foster was involved in tracking moon missions from Apollo 8 to Apollo 12. And is excited about astronauts going back to the moon.
And when the next man or woman does set foot on the lunar surface he will be making sure he sees it live on TV. During the Apollo 11 moon landing he was managing the signal that was then beamed around the world for everyone else to see.
NASA made medals cast from part of the actual spacecraft after the Apollo 8 mission and one was presented to Mr Foster for his involvement. He proudly displays it on the wall and has a number of certificates from NASA. He also has a replica of the watch worn on the Apollo 11 mission by Neil Armstrong. And as an anniversary gift his son bought him a replica of the actual Flight Plan for Apollo 11.
Mr Foster never met Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin but he did get to meet Alan Shepard who was the first American to travel into space and circumnavigate the world. He also walked on the moon in 1971.
Mr Foster also met Wernher von Braun who was the chief architect of the Saturn rockets that made the Apollo missions possible.
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