Title : Behind the scenes of Apollo 11: NASA releases 19,000 hours of secret audio feeds for mission
link : Behind the scenes of Apollo 11: NASA releases 19,000 hours of secret audio feeds for mission
Behind the scenes of Apollo 11: NASA releases 19,000 hours of secret audio feeds for mission
Behind the scenes of Apollo 11: NASA releases 19,000 hours of audio feeds from the mission that took man to the moon
- Conversations between Apollo 11 crew and Mission Control were released live at the time of the mission
- 'Backroom loops' where individual experts discussed the details of their systems and lives were kept secret
- The mission audio tapes were locked away in special climate-controlled vaults until now
- 19,000 hours of audio were digitized from NASA's Johnson Space Center's 170 remaining tapes
49 years after NASA made history by landing two humans on the surface of the Moon and safely returning them to Earth, the space agency has released the entire 19,000 hours of audio recorded during the Apollo 11 mission.
Although much of the world focused on the the first Earth-Moon conversation at 4:18 p.m. EDT July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the lunar module Eagle with just 30 seconds of fuel remaining, the entire mission was actually recorded.
After painstakingly digitising the original tapes, the audio has now been put online.
To listen to full audio feeds from the mission click here
Hundreds of audio conversations between the flight controllers and other teams supporting the mission were going on every minute of the mission over an intricate intercom system.
'The untold story of that momentous 8-day, 3-hour, mission by Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins was the round-the-clock support provided by Mission Control and many communications and support locations around the globe,' said NASA.
The trio of space explorers lifted off 9:32 a.m. July 16, 1969, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, landed on the moon July 20, lifted off again at 1:54 p.m. July 21, and splashed down at 12:50 p.m. July 24 in the Pacific Ocean.
On the ground, multipurpose support rooms (MPSRs) coordinated every technical, planning and management detail and decision with Mission Control and Apollo 11 flight directors Clifford Charlesworth, Gerry Griffin, Gene Kranz and Glynn Lunney.
July 20, 1969:Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot, walking on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity (EVA). Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. With one small step off a ladder, commander of the Apollo 11 mission Neil Armstrong of the US became the first human to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, before the eyes of hundreds of millions of awed television viewers worldwide. With that step, he placed mankind's first footprint on an extraterrestrial world and gained instant hero status.
The conversations occurred over what are called communications 'loops.'
The air-to-ground loops between the Apollo 11 crew and Mission Control were released to the news media and public as they happened as NASA fulfilled its responsibility to share its work with the American public.
However, the 'backroom loops' where individual experts discussed the details of their systems, and sometimes the details of their lives, have been locked away in special climate-controlled vaults until now
HOW THE APOLLO 11 AUDIO TAPES WERE CONVERTED
John Hansen re-wiring and installing newly designed and constructed 30-track read tape playback head
NASA's Johnson Space Center has the only functional remaining tape recorder capable of playing those approximately 170 remaining tapes.
But the time and effort of converting them to current digital formats was daunting, and required the tape deck to be modified from being able to handle two-channels at a time to handle the 30 channels on the historic tapes.
But through a collaborative effort with The University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas), the conversion finally has been completed, and the unique perspective of those at the core of supporting humankind's 'giant leap' is available to download and listen to all 19,000 hours of audio recordings.
None of the original 30-track audio tapes had been completely digitized before.
The first major engineering task was to refurbish the more than 45-year-old SoundScriber two-track audio play-back system to support 30-track playback.
The team had to design, install, and test the new 30-track head at NASA that could replay all 30-track audio tape channels simultaneously and set up a 30-channel digitization system pipeline.
Because much of the tapes documented the silence between conversations, the team had to develop a system to identify when conversations were beginning and ending and an active learning system for creating accurate transcripts of the conversations.
An illustrated example of conversation detection system; the red dotted box indicates conversation initiation by environment control system (ECS) engineer and blue dotted box indicates when EECOM initiates conversation with procedure officer
The team also developed a 'hot-spot detection' system to track speaker sentiment, using things such as laughter, to gain insights into behavior and cohesion of the astronauts and support team in Mission Control, and a web-based, interactive Apollo mission life-cycle interaction module aimed at helping younger users understand the highly technical content of many conversations.
In addition to the 19,000 hours of digitized audio, the team produced corresponding transcripts of every conversation, and linked them to the database of digital audio.
This enabled development of metadata that will help researchers comb through the hours and hours of audio to find the conversations most important to their area of interest of particular projects.
'We're approaching the 50th anniversary of Apollo, and I'm really pleased that this resource is becoming available,' said JSC Director Mark Geyer.
'Experience is one of the best teachers, so as we continue our work to expand human exploration of our solar system, go back to the Moon and on to Mars, we stand on the shoulders of the giants who made Apollo happen.
Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot, is photographed during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity on the Moon in this July, 1969 file photo.
A view of the Earth appears over the Lunar horizon as the Apollo 11 Command Module comes into view of the Moon before Astronatus Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin Jr. leave in the Lunar Module, Eagle, to become the first men to walk on the Moon's surface.
'These tapes offer a unique glimpse into what it takes to make history and what it will take to make the future.'
'The effort,' said John H.L. Hansen, principal investigator for the effort, is a way 'to contribute to recognizing the countless scientists, engineers, and specialists who worked behind the scenes of the Apollo program to make this a success. These are truly the 'heroes behind the heroes' of Apollo-11!'
An example of the computer print-out of an audio track sheet of a 30-channel Apollo analog tape showing channel information of all tracks.
In addition to the life-and-death drama as the lunar module Eagle's computer systems threatened to abort the landing, the conversations also provide insight into the 'humans in the loop' that made Apollo possible, including many humorous moments.
Hansen noted one spot in the tapes where two NASA flight controllers are working with Buzz Aldrin because for some reason the sensor which measures his breathing is not operating properly.
In the audio spot – they explore a number of reasons, ask questions, and maybe 10-15 minutes go by.
On July 24, 1969, the Apollo 11 crew with Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after achieving the first lunar landing.Upon splashing down, the Apollo 11 crew underwent a 21-day quarantine. The purpose of this was to protect against the small possibility of lunar contagion. This procedure was discontinued after Apollo 14. This photo provides a candid view of the astronauts in the Mobile Quarantine Facility.
Finally Buzz, in his own sense of humor, tells the NASA staff – 'well, if I stop breathing, I'll be sure to let you know!'
In one example, Aldrin bemoans that fact that so much of the Earth's surface is water and asks if Mission Control can do anything about it.
In another, the flight controller responsible for putting video on the large screens on the front wall of Mission Control offers a channel where flight controllers could view black and white video at their consoles, and is told by Flight Director Gene Kranz that those consoles are to be used for looking at data:
While the 19,000 hours of tape data from Apollo 11 are a significant accomplishment that will provide greatly improved access to that mission, they represent only 25 percent of the audio record for all of Project Apollo.
The rest -- which still remain to be digitized and transcribed - cover the early Apollo test flights in orbit around the Earth, the two test missions that sent Apollo 8 around the Moon in December 1968, put Apollo 10 in orbit around the Moon in May of 1969, the five later Apollo missions that landed on the Moon, and the 'successful failure' that saw Apollo 13 crippled by an oxygen tank explosion and required Mission Control to use all of the innovation it could muster to bring the crew of three home safely to Earth.
THE APOLLO MISSIONS
On July 16, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin, and Michael Collins lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, in the mammoth-sized Saturn V rocket on their way to the moon during the Apollo 11 mission.
The Apollo program was designed to land humans on the Moon and bring them safely back to Earth, and six of the missions (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17) achieved this goal.
The NASA program resulted in American astronauts' making a total of 11 spaceflights and walking on the moon.
The first four flights tested the equipment used in the Apollo Program.
Six of the other seven flights landed on the moon.
The first Apollo flight happened in 1968.
The first moon landing took place in 1969.
The last moon landing was in 1972.
A total of 12 astronauts walked on the moon.
The astronauts conducted scientific research there, studying the lunar surface and collecting moon rocks to bring back to Earth.
The six missions that landed on the Moon returned a wealth of scientific data and almost 400 kilograms of lunar samples.
Experiments included soil mechanics, meteoroids, seismic, heat flow, lunar ranging, magnetic fields, and solar wind experiments.
The first manned mission to the moon was Apollo 8.
It circled around the moon on Christmas Eve in 1968.
However, Apollo 8 did not land on the moon. It orbited the moon, then came back to Earth. The crew was Frank Borman, Bill Anders and Jim Lovell.
The first moon landing occurred on July 20, 1969, on the Apollo 11 mission.
The crew of Apollo 11 was Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin. Armstong and Aldrin walked on the lunar surface while Collins remained in orbit around the moon. When Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon, he said, 'That's one small step for (a) man; one giant leap for mankind.'
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