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Apollo Station of Fresnedillas

Fresnedillas de la Oliva, Sierra Oeste, Madrid

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones

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Apollo Station of Fresnedillas

Curiosity · Fresnedillas de la Oliva, Sierra Oeste, Madrid

Image of Fresnedillas de la Oliva, not of the place itself.

Between 1967 and 1985 the village housed one of the three main stations of NASA's MSFN network, together with Goldstone and Honeysuckle Creek, spaced about 120 degrees of longitude apart to keep continuous contact with the Apollo spacecraft. The antennas were installed some 50 kilometres from Madrid under an agreement between the Spanish and United States governments, and began their tracking work on 4 July 1967. It had an X-Y-mounted Cassegrain parabolic antenna 26 metres in diameter; once the Apollo programme ended, a second Cassegrain antenna was added, also X-Y-mounted, 9 metres across, dedicated to tracking satellites in orbits close to Earth.

Photo: Dirección General de Turismo. Consejería de Economía e Innovación Tecnológica. Comunidad de Madrid (CC BY 3.0 es)

What to see and do in Fresnedillas de la Oliva