NASA Tracking Station This place opened in 1971 and closed in 1977. Most of the original buildings have been removed. All that remains now is a long building which is used as the Lions Club and a storage building which have been painted an ugly purple color. There is a large cement structure that looks like it was used to mount an antenna on it. Theres a door going into it and it appears it leads to under the foundations of the old buildings. About 100 ft from the long building on a dirt road there are a large number of the poles that supported the Mini-Track antenna still standing. Here is some additional info that ive borrowed from the book A Freindly Invasion written by John Cardoulis: During the initial launching of the first fourteen Apollo series of spaceships from Cape Kennedy, Florida, the NASA mission control control at Houston, Texas, determined that even with twelve Satellite Tracking Stations in the US and around the world , there was one blind spot not covered, which resulted in a loss of the satellite for several hours tracking time while in orbit. The blind spot was over the Island of Newfoundland and immediate surrounding area. In 1970 NASA was given permission to build a satellite tracking station on a three-acre site at Shoe Cove, Newfoundland. A portable unit in the Bahamas was disassembled and reassembled at Shoe Cover. The elaborate facility opened in the fall of 1971. There were sixty American technicians on the tracking station and seventeen Newfoundlanders directly involved and assigned to the NASA Space Program. Mr. Knight was awarded a medallion by Nasa for his service. The Shoe Cover facility played an important partt in the tracking of the remaining Apollo space mission, including the first and second Skylab spaceships. On 15 Jully 1975 both the US Apollo and Russian Soyux spaceships blasted off in space to link up with one another on 17 July 1975 in the unprecedented two-day interstellar mission. The Shoe Cove tracking station was continuously used until 1976, by which time more elaborate and up-dated equipment had been put into operation by NASA and had eliminated the blind spot over Newfoundland. Except for electronic equipment, all the facilities at Shoe Cove were turned over to the Govnt of Newfoundland in 1977. Today it is used as a Lions Club Recreational facility.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 02:05:40 +0000
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