A 1960s tape recorder the size of a fridge could yield
valuable information from NASA's Apollo missions to the
moon.
An archiving error by
NASA meant 173 data tapes sat in Perth, Western Australia for
almost 40 years.
The tapes contain information about lunar dust. This could be
vital in expanding science's understanding of the moon, said ABC
News in Australia.
The Apollo 11, 12 and 14 missions carried "dust detectors",
invented by Perth physicist Brian O'Brien. This information was
broadcast back to earth and recorded onto tapes.
Brian O'Brien had access to the tapes at Sydney University, but
his papers on moon dust he published with the preliminary findings
failed to generate much interest at the time.
"These were the only active measurements of moon dust made
during the Apollo missions, and no-one thought it was important,"
said O'Brien.
"But it's now realised that dust, to quote Harrison Schmitt, who
was the last astronaut to leave the moon, is the number one
environmental problem on the moon."
NASA lost its copies of the tapes before they were archived. But
the Perth tapes have been kept in a climate-controlled room.
A giant
1960s IBM729 Mark 5 tape drive at the
Australian Computer Museum
will now be used to extract the information once again.