Written by Carmelo Amalfi Monday, 30 November 2009 14:49
A RESTORED set of lost NASA lunar tapes discovered at Curtin University in 2006 hold important clues for keeping out the dust in future missions to the Moon.
The data tapes, now held at the University of WA, recorded the surface conditions on the moon just after American astronaut Neil Armstrong’s first steps on July 21, 1969.
The 177 original, or primary, data tapes are believed to be the only tapes of their kind in the world – the data collected by a detector designed by Sydney-born physicist Brian O'Brien, 75, who now lives in Perth.
Used by Apollo 11, 12 and 14 astronauts to measure dust levels, the “Early Apollo Scientific Experiment Package” was deployed by Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin and consisted of several self-contained experiments recording temperature, seismic activity, sunset and sunrise.
The data was sent back to ground stations on Earth and recorded on magnetic tapes, copies of which are as rare as the original video footage of the 1969 touchdown.
Professor O'Brien says the data on the tapes was never fully analysed and contains the only such dust measurements made during the six Apollo missions.
“This is extremely important information for engineers and scientists planning future lunar missions,” he says.
Prof O’Brien’s lunar tapes were nearly thrown out with the rubbish when they were found in boxes stored under a physics lecture theatre at Curtin.
UWA and Perth-based company SpectrumData is applying for an Australian Research Council linkage grant to develop world-class tape readers which will help researchers extract better quality data from the noisy yet historic Apollo 11 tapes.
Prof O’Brien and the university are also applying for round one funding under the recently announced Australia Space Research Program.
Prof O’Brien believes analysing the dust data will help give Australia unique global expertise in space research.
He says the tapes are of international significance, especially since the United States, Russia, China, Japan, India and the European Union are all undertaking lunar projects.
It is likely to be a decade or more before such countries could carry out experiments involving the effects of lunar dust on human and robotic activities.
Apollo astronauts faced major difficulties with lunar dust during their early morning moonwalks. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center researcher Pamela Clark describes it as “abrasive Velcro”. These spikes also collect electrical charge, which holds them to a surface.
Until recently, Prof O’Brien believed there were no other copies of the dust data.
After a chance meeting in July 2009 with a retired engineer in the US, he learned there was another copy of the dust experiment data embedded in tapes of Apollo seismic data archived by Professor Yosio Nakamura, a 75-year-old University of Texas seismologist.
Prof O’Brien has since obtained a copy of Prof Nakamura’s readings of the tapes and will use them to complement his own data.
Prof O'Brien was professor of space science at Rice University in the US in the 1960s before taking up the role as the first director of the WA Environmental Protection Authority. He currently is an adjunct professor in the UWA School of Physics.
