Category: Henry S.F. Cooper Jr.

As additional precautions, Kranz requested that a two-hundred-foot radio antenna (called a deep-space dish) in Australia be added to the global network tracking and communicating with the spacecraft, and that additional computers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland be what he called “cranked up” — made ready for use. He also telephoned the Real Time Computer Complex on the ground floor of the Operations Wing to ask that an additional I.B.M. computer be brought onto the line.