Vintage
Apollo space missions tapes uncovered at a university in Western Australia are not what a team
of experts are trying to locate.
"These
aren't the tapes we're looking for," said John Sarkissian, operations scientist
at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization's (CSIRO)
Parkes Radio Observatory in Parkes, Australia.
The
story that is now making the rounds, Sarkissian added, refers to copies of
one-inch magnetic tapes recorded at the Carnarvon station in Western Australia.
They contain data from Apollo 11's Early Apollo Surface Experiments Package
(EASEP)-a set of scientific instruments emplaced at the Apollo 11 landing
site by the astronauts.
EASEP
was the forerunner of what was called the ALSEP experiment packages, short for
the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package and used on the later Apollo
missions.
Still
at issue is the location of Apollo 11 Slow-Scan Television tapes (SSTV). [See story.] Those lost tapes could give the world a better view of the
first human explorers as they walked upon the Moon more than three decades ago.
The
SSTV recordings were of better quality than scan-converted imagery that-while
fuzzy and far from crisp-enthralled a global audience of Apollo 11 moon watchers
back here on Earth.
By
recovering the SSTV, the hope is to provide the public a higher-quality, upgraded
21st century look at the exploits of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin-the lunar
twosome that first set boot on the Moon back in July 1969.
A
team of experts-both inside and outside of NASA-continue on their quest to
pinpoint the Apollo TV tapes in question.
Regarding
the on-going search for the Apollo SSTV tapes, Sarkissian added that "there's
nothing new to report...unfortunately." The team in the United States is very deep into checking the various places the tapes may have been
archived, he said.
"But
we haven't yet found anything. There's been a lot of paper work uncovered, but
not the tapes," Sarkissian reported.
Telemetry data
While
news headlines talk about "lost Moon landing tapes" the actual tapes recently found
were neither lost nor of the Moon landing, explained Bill Wood, a retired
Apollo tracking station engineer in Barstow, California.
Wood
is also part of the group that's on the hunt for the SSTV recordings, offering
technical expertise gleaned from his background in supporting all of the Apollo
missions at Goldstone-part of NASA's worldwide network of deep space antennas
run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
Wood
reiterated that what was found were data tapes from the Apollo 11 EASEP package
left on the Moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts.
"NASA
had the cooperation of many colleges and universities around the world to
analyze data from the data packages left on the Moon," Wood advised. "Since
NASA had a very close relationship with the Australian government in support of
Apollo, the University of Sydney was supplied copies of EASEP and ALSEP
telemetry data as part of the effort to learn more about the Moon."
Wood
said that NASA still has detailed recordings of all the EASEP and ALSEP packages
from activation until their respective nuclear power supplies were exhausted
about 30 years later.
Running down leads
They have not found the tapes, Wood told SPACE.com.
"But, we are running down every lead."
The
inquiry into the whereabouts of the SSTV tapes has not proven easy.
Budget
cuts at NASA in the post-Apollo years meant that many day-to-day records were
discarded. Jobs and entire divisions that dealt with data records were
eliminated.
Since
there was no official requirement to archive data like this, Wood added, the SSTV
tape could have gone the same way that many old television programs did: TV stations
degaussed the tapes and reused them.
"But,
no conclusions yet," Wood said. He noted that he spends most of his time
calling one person after another to get tips about other people to contact.
However, many of the individuals involved from long ago have passed away,
making the task more difficult.
"It
is taking contacts with retirees and others who were involved at the time to
figure out what happened," Wood concluded. "So the search continues."
For
added details concerning the hunt for the Apollo 11 Slow-Scan Television Tapes,
focus in on these web sites:
http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/Apollo_11/tapes/Apollo_11_Tape_Search_Flyer.pdf
http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/apollo11/apollo11_sstv_search_report.html
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