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The theory the students chose to explore this question is Claude Shannon's mathematical theory of communication. Drawing on his linear schema: source, transmitter, signal, noise, receiver, destination, the students traced the journey of the Apollo 11 images step by step: the encoding of images on the Moon, their transmission by radio waves across space, the noise introduced by the Moon's rotation and atmospheric disturbances, the error correction mechanisms NASA engineers put in place, and finally the reception, decoding and live broadcast of the images on Earth.
To bring this analysis to life, the students built a physical installation materialising each element of Shannon's schema. They constructed a cardboard television and radio, placing inside each a tablet looping the Apollo 11 landing video and a smartphone playing the sound of the transmission between Apollo 11 and NASA. Toys representing a rocket and a space station, Playmobil figures for the astronauts and the public, and a handmade Moon completed the scene. A VR headset allowed visitors to immerse themselves in the mission from departure to landing, and an interactive encoding and decoding game invited them to decode messages using the Caesar cipher, placing them directly in the role of the receiver in Shannon's schema. 
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On 20 July 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the Moon, and approximately 650 million viewers watched it happen live on television. A group of students chose to ask the question that lies at the heart of that moment: how did those images travel from the lunar surface to the living room of millions of people around the world?
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