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"On July 21st 1969, Honeysuckle Creek observatory brought us the first TV pictures of men on the moon. The original signals were recorded on high quality slow-scan TV (SSTV) tapes. What was released to the TV networks was reduced to lower quality commercial TV standards. Unfortunately John Sarkissian of Parkes Observatory Australia reports that 698 of the 700 boxes of original tapes have gone missing [warning: large PDF] from the U.S. National Archives. Even more worryingly, the last place on earth which can actually read these tapes is scheduled to close in October this year. The PDF contains interesting comparisons which show that if all you've seen are the TV pictures from the landing, you really haven't seen the first moon walk in its full glory."
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/13/1654200
That last bit, "the last place on earth which can actually read these tapes is scheduled to close in October", is particularly telling. There's warehouses full of tape that NASA and the archives have in storage, but the equipment for reading it no longer exists. The people who understood the data format no longer exist. Marvin the Martian could be on those tapes and we'll never know.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/13/1654200
That last bit, "the last place on earth which can actually read these tapes is scheduled to close in October", is particularly telling. There's warehouses full of tape that NASA and the archives have in storage, but the equipment for reading it no longer exists. The people who understood the data format no longer exist. Marvin the Martian could be on those tapes and we'll never know.
