Update: Apollo 11 Tapes
08.15.06
NASA personnel continue to sift through 37-year-old records in their
attempt to locate the magnetic tapes that recorded the original Apollo
11 video in 1969. The original tapes may be at the Goddard Space Flight
Center, which requested their return from the National Archives in the
1970s, or at another location within the NASA archiving system. Despite
the challenges of the search, NASA does not consider the tapes to be
lost.
The tapes were sent from Goddard to a storage facility of the National
Archives in late 1969. This kind of transfer is standard for government
records, whether contracts, memos, photographs or space telemetry. Among
the 2,614 boxes of Apollo mission tapes that went to the facility, the
original Apollo 11 may have been among them. Between 1975 and 1979,
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center recalled all but two of the 2,614
boxes. The remaining two boxes included telemetry tapes from Apollo
9, leading engineers to believe that these shipments contained
most of the Apollo related materials.
Image left: The machines pictured read the 1-inch-wide magnetic data tape from their 14-inch round reels. Multiple machines are used because each reel only records about 15 minutes worth of data. As one reel fills, the next machine automatically starts recording a slight overlap for data continuity. Credit: NASA. (Click on image to enlarge.)
First-generation copies of the converted video from Apollo 11 as well as
other first-generation copies and some original versions of the
converted video for the Apollo 12 through Apollo 17 flights are still in
NASA Johnson Space Center's Informational Resources Directorate's video
vault in Houston.
About 18 months ago, NASA Goddard began an informal search for the tapes
after some inquiries from retirees from the space agency and others from
the Apollo program. NASA engineers are hopeful that when the tapes are
found, they can use today's digital technology to provide a version of
the moonwalk that is much better quality than what we have
today. Goddard engineers were able to extract data from a
nearly-identical type of tape recorded in 1969 of an Apollo simulation
from the Honeysuckle Creek, Australia tracking station providing
optimism that when the tapes are located, we can preserve original
video.
Image right: Pictured on the small screen in this image is sample raw data from a magnetic data tape before being split out into the various video, telemetry, biomedical sensor, and voice communications between the spacecraft and the Earth. Credit: NASA. (Click on image to enlarge.)
In the event the tapes are found, NASA Goddard is taking steps to make sure all the unique hardware required to process the Apollo 11 moonwalk tapes is still around and can be used to make digital reproductions of the tapes.
NASA has also asked that any paperwork related to the transfer of the
tapes from the National Records Center to NASA Goddard and paperwork
related to the NASA Johnson Space Center's transfer of tapes to the
National Archives be preserved and digitized to prevent further
deterioration of these historical records.
Because of power limitations, Apollo 11 used specially developed
slow-scan video that had to be converted into a format that could be
broadcast over commercial television. The original signal was
transmitted at 10 frames per second in one field and had to be converted to 30 frames
per second in two fields to be viewed on your TV set.
Image left: Pictured is the side of a blank Tape Container box. Boxes like these likely contain the tapes in question and have tracking information filled out on the label from when they were initially sent to the National Records Center. Each box can contain up to five data tapes. Credit: NASA. (Click on image to enlarge.)
The signal originated on the Moon, traveled through the emptiness of
space back to Earth, and was received by tracking stations on the ground
in Goldstone, California; Parkes, Australia; and Honeysuckle Creek,
Australia. These three tracking stations recorded the original signal
that included the television video, as well as voice, telemetry, and
biomedical data. The data was recorded onto magnetic tapes, and
simultaneously converted into a U.S. broadcast format for transmission
to Houston and final release to U.S. television networks. The equipment
used to convert the signal unfortunately caused some unavoidable loss of image quality.
Related Links:
+ Provide Information to Aid the Search
+ Apollo 11 Multimedia Flash Feature
+ National Archives Listing of NASA Holdings
Jason Townsend
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center