49 years after NASA made history by landing on the surface of the moon and the earthquake, the space agency has the entire 19,000 hours of the Apollo 11 mission.
Although the earth-Moon conversation at 4:18 pm EDT July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the lunar module Eagle with just 30 seconds of fuel remaining, the entire
After painstakingly digitizing the original tapes, the audio has now been put online.
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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 Rentals around the Globe,' said NASA.
The trio of space explorers lifted off 9:32 am July 16, 1969, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, landed on the moon July 20, lifted off at 1:54 pm July 21, and splashed down at 12:50 pm July 24 in the Pacific Ocean.
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 Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. With one small step off a ladder, ordering 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 million viewers worldwide. With that step, it's a mankind's first footprint on an extraterrestrial world and gained instant status
The conversations occurred on what are called 'loops' communications.
The Air-to-Ground Loops Between the Apollo 11 Crew and Mission Control were issued to NASA fulfilled their responsibility to share their 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,
HOW THE APOLLO 11 AUDIO TAPES WERE CONVERTED
NASA's Johnson Space Center has the only remaining record.
But the time and effort of converting them to current digital formats is daunting, and requires the tape to be modified to a handle to be able to handle two channels.
But Through A Collaborative Effort with The University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas), the conversion finally has been completed, and the single perspective of those at the core of supporting humankind's 'giant leap' is available to download
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 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 for identifying and translating conversations.
An illustrated example of the conversation detection system; The EEC team was informed when the EEC initiated the conversation with the procedure officer
The team also developed a 'hot-spot detection' system to track speaker feeling, using things such The role of the 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. [19659003Inadditiontothe19000hoursofdigitizedaudiotheteamproducedcorrespondingtranscriptsofeveryconversationandlinkedthemtothedatabaseofdigitalaudio
This facilitates the development of metadata that will help researchers find their way to the most important conversations in the world.
'We're approaching the 50th anniversary of Apollo, and I'm really pleased that this resource is becoming available,' said JSC Director Mark Geyer.
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 on the Moon as Apollo 11 Command Module comes into the Moon before Astronatus Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin Jr. leave in the Moon Module, Eagle, to become the first to the moon on the moon's surface.
'Experience is one of the best teachers, so we continue to work on expanding our exploration of our solar system, go back to the Moon of the giants who made Apollo happen.
'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 HL 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 map showing channel information of all tracks.
The Earth in this image from Apollo XI looks and the lunar module, which appears to be stapled together from the sheet metal seems to be very difficult to achieve.
In addition to the life-and-death drama as the lunar module Eagle's computer to the 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 its 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, Michael Collins Pilot Module Pilot and Lunar Pilot Module Buzz Aldrin splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after landing the first lunar landing.Upon splashing down, the Apollo 11 crew underwent a 21-day quarantine. The purpose of this is to protect against the small possibility of lunar contagion. This procedure was discontinued after Apollo 14. This photo provides a 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 is one of those who thinks of the Earth's surface. responsible for driving video on the front of the walls :
While the 19,000 hours of tape data from Apollo 11 are a significant accomplishment, they are only 25 percent of the record for all of Project Apollo.
The rest – which still remains to be digitized and transcribed – early Apollo test flights in orbit around the Earth, the two test missions that feels 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 crawled by an oxygen tank 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 Apollo 11 mission
The Apollo program was designed to land humans on the Moon and brought them 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 was 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 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 stayed 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. '