Missing Apollo Data tapes

Yup another case of "ARCHIVING ERROR" by NASA

And this time THEY use the word 'missing'

Follow up to:
Missing Lunar Orbiter Tapes Found
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Fridge-sized tape recorder could crack lunar mysteries

By Nic MacBean

A 1960s tape recorder the size of a household fridge could be the key to unlocking valuable information from NASA's Apollo missions to the moon.

An archiving error by NASA has meant 173 data tapes have sat in Perth for almost 40 years, holding information about lunar dust that could be vital in expanding science's understanding of the moon.

But after almost four decades, a donation from a Sydney computer society looks set to breathe fresh life into a long-neglected field of lunar science.

The Apollo 11, 12 and 14 missions of the late 1960s carried "dust detectors" that were invented by Perth physicist Brian O'Brien. This information was beamed back to earth and recorded onto tapes.

NASA, in the words of their website, misplaced the tapes before they were archived, Dr OBrien said.

Dr O'Brien had access to the tapes at Sydney University, but the couple of papers on moon dust he published with the preliminary findings failed to spark as much interest from the scientific community as he was hoping for.

"These were the only active measurements of moon dust made during the Apollo missions, and no-one thought it was important," he said.

"But it's now realized that dust, to quote Harrison Schmitt, who was the last astronaut to leave the moon, is the number one environmental problem on the moon."

Funny I seem to recall all the grief John Lear got for saying all those years that the Apollo Data ended up in Australia...

Seems I also recall him talking about dust clouds on the Moon

The revelation of the loss only came two years ago. Dr O'Brien says there is no indication as to when exactly the tapes were lost, but he guesses that it was "way, way back".

When Dr O'Brien learnt of the tape loss, he was contacted by Guy Holmes from data recovery company SpectrumData, who offered to try and get hold of the information.

Mr Holmes has kept the tapes in a climate-controlled room since then, and it was only when he stumbled upon a 1960s IBM729 Mark 5 tape drive at the Australian Computer Museum Society that his company had the ability to unlock the information.

SOURCE ABC NEws

As a recap of other related history...

The Saga Of the Lost Space Tapes
NASA Is Stumped in Search For Videos of 1969 Moonwalk
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 31, 2007

"We all understood the importance of this event to history, to posterity, and so we all should have made sure those tapes were safe and secure," said Lebar, 81. "I ask myself today, 'Why the heck didn't you think that way back then?' The answer is that I just assumed that NASA was going to do it. But, unfortunately, that was a bad assumption."

The tale of the missing Apollo 11 tapes is made all the more awkward because televised images of subsequent Apollo missions were greatly improved. It was only for Apollo 11 that an unusually configured video feed was used. It was transmitted from the moon to ground sites in Australia and the Mojave Desert in California, where technicians reformatted the video for broadcast and transmitted long-distance over analog lines to Houston. A lot of video quality was lost during that process, turning clear, bright images into gray blobs and oddly moving shapes -- what Lebar now calls a "bastardized" version of the actual footage.

Washington Post

This is the size of the missing Apollo tapes



Honeysuckle Creek, Australia

In 2002, one of the men who had worked at Australia's Honeysuckle Creek ground station in 1969 -- and who had seen the high-quality Apollo 11 video originals back then -- found a 14-inch reel of tape in his garage that seemed to be from that period. He brought it to a Honeysuckle Creek reunion and passed it around.



www.honeysucklecreek.net...

BBC Apollo 11 Missing Tapes
Sir Patrick Moore

Moore has undertaken significant research in astronomy. It was revealed in a TV programme that when the Russians wanted accurate information on the Moon over a number of years, they first went to America then other countries for the information but could not turn it up. Then someone suggested Patrick Moore and on going to his house and asking him, they were invited in. Moore left them and returned with a pile of exercise books with all the necessary information in, his records of observations over many years which is how in 1959, the Soviet Union used his charts of the moon to correlate their first pictures of the far side with his mapped features on the near side and he was involved in the lunar mapping used by the NASA Apollo space missions. In 1965, he was appointed Director of the newly-constructed Armagh Planetarium, a post he held until 1968. During the Apollo programme, he was one of the presenters of BBC television's coverage of the moon landing missions. The tapes of these broadcasts no longer exist: conflicting stories have circulated as to what precisely happened to them, or whether the broadcasts were recorded at all.

WIKIPEDIA

Tale of the TV Tapes: Apollo 11 Mission Archive Mystery Unspools
By Leonard David

Back in July 1969, the first moonwalks by Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are frozen forever moments in the history books. But it turns out that millions of riveted spectators back on Earth were on the receiving end of substantially degraded television showing the epic event.

The highest-quality television signal from Apollo 11's touchdown zone in the moon's Sea of Tranquility--from an antenna mounted atop the Eagle lunar lander--was recorded on telemetry tapes at three tracking stations on Earth: Goldstone in California and Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes in Australia.

Scads of the tapes were produced--and now a search is on to locate them. And if recovered and given a 21st century digital makeover, they could yield a far sharper view of that momentous day, compared to what was broadcast around the globe.

SPACE.COM

CNN.com - One small step for man, 700-box tape loss for NASA

The U.S. government has misplaced the original recording of the first moon landing, including astronaut Neil Armstrong’s famous “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” a NASA spokesman said on Monday.

proaudio.wordpress.com...



NASA on MOON DUST STORMS

Seems they knew about this since Surveyor Just didn't thing it was 'important'



Moon Fountains



Above: On the left are lunar "twilight rays" sketched by Apollo 17 astronauts; on the right are terrestrial crepuscular rays photographed by author Trudy E. Bell.

science.nasa.gov...

Moon Storms

December 7, 2005: Every lunar morning, when the sun first peeks over the dusty soil of the moon after two weeks of frigid lunar night, a strange storm stirs the surface.

The next time you see the moon, trace your finger along the terminator, the dividing line between lunar night and day. That's where the storm is. It's a long and skinny dust storm, stretching all the way from the north pole to the south pole, swirling across the surface, following the terminator as sunrise ceaselessly sweeps around the moon.

science.nasa.gov...





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[edit on 11-11-2008 by zorgon]

Good place to add THIS

Nasa Forgot How to go to the Moon

SPACE JUNKYARD

APOLLO REALITY

Building 9 at the Manned Spacecraft Center






[edit on 11-11-2008 by zorgon]

Already posted
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Keep up man, you're falling behind.

Originally posted by Phage
Keep up man, you're falling behind.

Yup your right... thanks

Mods please close this one, thanks

Time to look for a new 'career'

Originally posted by Phage
Already posted

Thank you Occifer.



[edit on 11/11/08 by YourForever]