They lost the WHAT??

[dianeduane]

-- was my response when I woke up this morning to hear our old buddy David Moore from Astronomy Ireland on RTEacute;'s morning news show, talking about a story that the tapes of the Apollo 11 moon landing had been mislaid.

Needless to say, the story's all over Google News at the moment, in many permutations and levels of detail. This one, though, lays in some additional useful info.

Citing a letter to the Herald, a member of the team involved in the search for the missing tapes, Bill Wood, described their article as "great disservice to a group of Australian and US Apollo tracking station veterans involved in a new search for better Apollo 11 EVA images.".

Mr. Wood pointed out that one of the tracking stations that these tapes had been recorded at was hosting a detailed description of the process Earth-side. Written by John Sarkissian of the CSIRO Parkes Observatory it gave a fascinating glimpse into what was done to show the world Neil Armstong stepping onto the Moon's surface.

What Bill Wood, John Sarkissian, and their other former Apollo 11 colleagues are trying to track down are the recording of what was broadcast from the Moon, referred to as Slow-Scan TV (SSTV). This raw data was recorded onto 1" wide magnetic tapes at the same time as it was converted for terrestrial TV broadcast. As far as the paper trail goes, there are about 700 boxes that might contain the these coveted tapes. They are mixed in with recordings from the entire Apollo era, meaning there is a lot of footage that, with modern techiques, could offer far clearer pictures of man's first visits to another celestial body.

...Let's just hope they find this stuff before it degrades beyond usefulness...as it would be great to see such historic material digitized for greater clarity (and permanence!).

(Here's the full article at Space.com that the quote above is referencing. It makes it clear that the tapes being sought are archived backup data.)

Comments

[captainlucy.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, this has reminded me of nothing as much as the desparate search for lost Doctor Who episodes from the Hartnell/Troughton eras, which usually seem to be found by some blokes in Australia or Singapore. :D

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Somewhat unnerving, this.

Wishing the archive-hunters good luck and better hunting...

NASA strip mining it's past again

[were-gopher.livejournal.com]

Looks like it's more than the footage they're looking for judging by the amount of engineers crawling about space museums at the momonet.

http://tinyurl.co.uk/h0m4

(linked from www.forteantimes.com . A surprisingly good source for stuff like this)

[sternel.livejournal.com]

Hopefully somebody cites this the next time they try to cut archival funding...

[batyatoon]

as it would be great to see such historic material digitized for greater clarity (and permanence!).

And greater accessibility, too, if they decide to go that way. Which I hope they will.

[buran.livejournal.com]

Yes, unfortunately it is true. This has been out in space news circles for a month or two now and is finally hitting the popular mainstream press. I couldn't believe it either. You'd think that sort of thing would be carefully tracked. Unfortunately, if that media lab closes before the tapes are found, it will be much harder to digitize them.

Very distressing.

Re: NASA strip mining it's past again

[buran.livejournal.com]

It's the ORIGINAL footage that couldn't be broadcast over the TV networks of the time.

They are also hoping to find records from other Apollo missions.

Fortunately, today compatibility is far less of a problem and the fact that stuff is recorded digitally from the beginning means that records can be duplicated infinitely with no quality loss or translated into new formats with no loss.