"[21] NASA also had ongoing research reasons for finding these higher-resolution tapes, as the Constellation program shared some similar tasks with the original Apollo program. Some scientists and NASA researchers have even gone as far as to claim NASAs astronauts came across evidence of alien activity on the Moon. Space is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! The equipment used aboard the Lunar Module to make the recordings was called the Data Storage Electronics Assembly (DSEA). The NASA backchannel communications perfectly suited his needs. [8], This live conversion was crude compared to early-21st-century electronic digital conversion techniques. Mr Childress said: The astronauts apparently talked about seeing extraterrestrial objects on the Moon, including flying saucers parked along the edge of a crater within their view.. [35][36], Photograph of the original SSTV signal of Aldrin and Armstrong at the foot of, For the purposes of clarity and simplicity in this article, 60 fields and 30 frames per second are used. Credit: NASA We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you've consented to and to improve our understanding of you. Then some poor undergraduate drew the short straw and spent five days a week over several months running through all the tapes to digitize them. One such researcher is book author David Childress, who said communiques of parked UFOs on the Moon were intercepted during this gap and withheld from the public. The prophecies of Nostradamus: What did he predict for 2023? Now Hear This! [18], News that these analog data tapes were missing emerged on August 5, 2006, when the print and online versions of The Sydney Morning Herald published a story with the title One giant blunder for mankind: how NASA lost moon pictures. (Image credit:. And what else is very telling is that although the USSR at the time was getting to be quite able to send its own astronauts to the Moon, it never seems to have done so. He can be reached at Jefferson Community & Technical College, 1000 Community College Dr, Louisville, KY 40272. Image Above: Apollo 11 Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin. Toll-free: 1-888-277-5289 It sounds so routine. The result: 19,000 hours of newly digitized audio data, ready for Hansen's speech recognition analysis, which included identifying more than 600 different voices on the tapes. NASA has uploaded all of the audio to the Internet Archive, a nonprofit website that hosts cultural artifacts in digital form. The data tapes were used to record all transmitted data for backup. "If the tapes are as described in the sale material, they are 2-inch videotapes recorded in Houston from the video that had been converted to a format that could be broadcast over commercial television and contain no material that hasn't been preserved at NASA.". Editor's note: An earlier version of this story misstated that NASA had dismissed ownership claims of George's Apollo moonwalk tapes and their authenticity. Baba Vanga is credited with predicting many notable world events, but what does she think is in store for 2023? The three reels were said to be first-generation recordings of the Apollo 11 EVA video,[26] but were not the missing 1-inch (25mm) telemetry data tapes. Jennifer Ouellette by Since the real-time broadcast conversion worked, and was widely recorded on both videotape and film, the backup video was not deemed important at the time. All photos used with permission of The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, except as noted. To quote from Nancy Atkinsons book, pilot Frank A. What did the alarm mean? What do you say? The lunar eavesdropping project arose because he had an interest in independently verifying the information that NASA had been providing about the Apollo program. Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two people on the Moon. NASAs Apollo 11 crew blasted off from Earth on July 16, 1969, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Since then I have discussed Lunar Eavesdropping with many people, including those on a history of astronomy e-mail list, so more references to it may now exist. The item consists of three metal reels of Ampex 148 High Band 2-inch Quadruplex videotape, each between 45 and 50 minutes in length. Lunar Eavesdropping: Louisvillians hear moon walk talk on homemade equipment, sporting Rutherfords byline, appeared in the Wednesday, July 23, 1969 issue of that paper front page of section B, the local news section (see Figure 1). It all sounds so simple and straightforward, which obscures the real truth: for every one of these steps, there were hundreds (or more) potential points of failure that everyone involved needed to guard against. IE 11 is not supported. Jennifer Ouellette / Jennifer Ouellette is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. The back-and-forth between astronauts and mission control seldom gets much attention. So-called Moon landing experts who have studied the Apollo 11 mission have boldly accused NASA of holding back vital information on what really happened on July 20, 1069. Apollo 11 is a 2019 American documentary film edited, produced and directed by Todd Douglas Miller. After a 380,000 km journey, thecrew set foot on the Moon, walked upon it, installed scientific instruments, took samples, and thendeparted for Earth. According to our records, the flight plan of Apollo 11 went off without a hitch. To broadcast the SSTV transmission on standard television, NASA ground receiving stations performed real-time scan conversion to the NTSC television format. And while the roll jets fired in bursts in an attempt to stabilize the Service Module, the Minus X jets fired continuously. The astronauts needed an answer. In ancient days, men looked at the stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. If the scan converter's settings were incorrectly set, as they were at the Goldstone station during the first few minutes of Apollo 11's moonwalk, the negative impact on the image could be very obvious. I asked Baysinger whether he found anything that NASA edited out comments about things going wrong, the astronauts being loose with their language or exclamations about meeting space aliens. More info. [1], Nafzger stated that the team did find several post-conversion copies of the broadcast that were of higher quality than what had been previously seen by the public. Canary Islands station has Loss Of Signal from Apollo 11. Mr Bara, who also appeared on the History Channel, said both of NASAs astronauts were evidently upset by something they saw on the Moon within 30 minutes of landing. On July 21, after just 21 hours and 36 minutes on the Moon, the ascent engine fired, bringing the Eagle back to dock with Columbia, and returning astronauts Aldrin and Armstrong to the Command and Service Module with astronaut Collins. Another clip captures a playful remark about the booze-soaked celebrations that were expected in Houston following the astronauts return. FOLLOW NBC NEWS MACH ON TWITTER, FACEBOOK, AND INSTAGRAM. (SSPL/Getty Images), Both the Command Module and the Service Module. When Neil Armstrong took his legendary first steps on the Moon on July 20, 1969, it defined a generation. [2], There was also documentation that the Apollo 11 moonwalk SSTV was recorded at the Parkes, Australia facility on modified Ampex two-inch helical scan VTRs. The famed astrologer has been credited with predicting numerous major events from throughout history, but what predictions did he make for 2023? 'The Eagle has landed': Remembering Apollo 11 moon mission, descended toward the moons rocky surface on July 20, 1969, 160 heartbeats per minute: The final, frantic moments before the historic moon landing, Saturn V rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, uploaded all of the audio to the Internet Archive, The human factor: What it will take to build the perfect team for traveling to Mars. If the Service Module had collided with the Command Module, a re-entry disaster similar to Space Shuttle Columbia could have occurred just as the USA was taking the conclusive steps of the Space Race. Even from our perspective in 2019, 50 years later, humanitys achievements from July, 1969, still mark the pinnacle of crewed spaceflight. But only recently were the actual onboard recordings from Apollo 11 digitized so that the recordings could be made available on the Internet. READ MORE: SHOCK claim footprint does not match Neil Armstrong's boot. Greg Wiseman, a NASA engineer who worked on the project, said the ultimate goal is to identify all the voices on the tapes and pay tribute to all the people who helped orchestrate one of humanity's biggest moments. After Apollo 11 he moved on to other projects. NASA clarifies what they are", "Las Vegas man almost tossed the Apollo 11 moonwalk tapes he sold for $1.8 million", "3 original NASA moon landing videos sell for $1.82 million at auction", "Original Apollo 11 landing videotapes sell for $1.8M", "One Small Step, One Rare Recording: See the Moon Landing Like Never Before", "Space Week: Lost Moon landing tapes discovered", "Australian Geographic to screen lost Moon footage", "Apollo Experience Report Television System", "Missing tapes could reveal clearer moon", "NASA Releases Restored Apollo 11 Moonwalk Video", "TV show of the century: A travelogue not atmosphere", "One giant blunder for mankind: how NASA lost moon pictures", "NASA orders search for missing moonwalk tape", "Comparison photographs of the Apollo 11 Lunar Television as seen at Goldstone, Honeysuckle Creek, Parkes and Houston", "The Moonwalks as seen at Honeysuckle Creek", "NASA Erased First Moonwalk Tapes, But Restores Copies", "The search for the Apollo 11 SSTV tapes", "1 Small Step for a Cam: How Astronauts Shot Video of the Moon Landing", "On Eagle's Wings: The Parkes Observatory's Support of the Apollo 11 Mission", Restored Apollo 11 EVA, published on July 17, 2014 by NASA on YouTube, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Apollo_11_missing_tapes&oldid=1128110495, This page was last edited on 18 December 2022, at 12:23. They look very sullen, very depressed, theyre looking down. Four days later, humanity would take our first footsteps on another world. That channel was not public and it could have been very easily used to communicate information that you didnt want to be heard over the general public transmissions. "Roger, we got you, we're go on that alarm," came the reassuring reply. ]]> The story discussed how Baysinger recorded 35 minutes of conversation from VHF signals transmitted between astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins (he did not attempt to pick up the encoded S-band signals from the main Moon-Earth communication link).1 These 35 minutes included the time during which President Richard Nixon transmitted a message of congratulations to the astronauts. //-->