WEBVTT FILE

1
00:00:01.600 --> 00:00:05.970
DAVE: This is the only long-term information that we have from the surface of the Moon.

2
00:00:05.970 --> 00:00:08.820
PAT: I don't think the search for data is over with.

3
00:00:08.820 --> 00:00:13.440
ERNIE: Where did all of this stuff come from? How did it form? What was the process?

4
00:00:13.440 --> 00:00:20.900
Does it happen all the time across the universe? Or are we somehow unique or at least unusual? What does it all mean?

5
00:00:20.900 --> 00:00:28.400
NARRATOR: I'm Katie Atkinson, and this is NASA Explorers: Apollo, where we tell stories about our Moon and the people who explore it.

6
00:00:28.400 --> 00:00:34.900
ARCHIVAL AUDIO FOOTAGE: Tape recorder's running.

7
00:00:34.900 --> 00:00:36.900
[MUSIC]

8
00:00:36.900 --> 00:00:46.000
NARRATOR: 50 years ago,  NASA's Apollo program brought humans further into space than we'd ever gone before.

9
00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:53.980
On July 20th 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin trekked the surface of the Moon for two and a half hours.

10
00:00:53.980 --> 00:00:58.340
The Apollo 11 crew would spend about a week in space.

11
00:00:58.340 --> 00:01:09.358
But us?  We're still learning.  By all appearances scientific discoveries seem to happen in an instant.

12
00:01:09.358 --> 00:01:18.000
We often forget that science progresses slowly, quietly inching us towards something meaningful.

13
00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:27.150
We pick up pieces of information over decades, try to make sense of them and then venture into a new set of mysteries to untangle.

14
00:01:27.150 --> 00:01:29.400
[MUSIC]

15
00:01:29.400 --> 00:01:38.050
It takes time. For the Apollo program, at least half a century... and we're not done yet.

16
00:01:38.050 --> 00:01:44.059
The Moon still has plenty of unanswered questions for us.

17
00:01:44.059 --> 00:01:52.623
ARCHIVAL AUDIO FOOTAGE: (APOLLO 11 LIFT-OFF NARRATION) T-Minus one minute, 35 seconds on the Apollo mission,

18
00:01:52.623 --> 00:02:00.333
the flight to land the first men on the Moon … all indications coming into the control center at this time indicate we are a go

19
00:02:00.333 --> 00:02:04.140
… one minute, 25 seconds and counting.

20
00:02:04.140 --> 00:02:08.660
NARRATOR: During NASA’s Apollo program, six crews of astronauts landed on the Moon.

21
00:02:08.660 --> 00:02:14.960
During those visits, the astronauts set up what were called Lunar Surface Experiment Packages.

22
00:02:14.960 --> 00:02:20.900
They were heat flow experiments, solar wind spectrometers, ion detectors...

23
00:02:20.900 --> 00:02:24.740
instruments that studied the Moon inside and out.

24
00:02:24.740 --> 00:02:30.300
These scientific experiments gathered massive amounts of information and sent it back to Earth.

25
00:02:30.300 --> 00:02:33.900
But the thing about that data? A lot of it... was misplaced.

26
00:02:33.900 --> 00:02:37.880
[MUSIC]

27
00:02:37.880 --> 00:02:40.780
NARRATOR: Dave Williams is on a mission to track it down.

28
00:02:40.780 --> 00:02:46.620
DAVE: I work on a lot of the older Apollo data, which is really sort of incomplete.

29
00:02:46.620 --> 00:02:52.707
Unfortunately towards the end of the Apollo program, a lot of the data were just archived away and weren't really looked at.

30
00:02:52.707 --> 00:02:56.820
And, the other problem is that back in the 70s the data were archived

31
00:02:56.820 --> 00:03:01.420
on things like microfilm, microfiche, that were really almost inaccessible.

32
00:03:01.420 --> 00:03:06.120
This is the only long-term information that we have from the surface of the Moon.

33
00:03:06.120 --> 00:03:08.600
There's just nothing else.

34
00:03:08.600 --> 00:03:16.160
And so we decided if we really wanted to know about the Moon, we were going to have to restore these data.

35
00:03:16.160 --> 00:03:21.320
NARRATOR: Dave is a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

36
00:03:21.320 --> 00:03:23.660
He's also a data detective.

37
00:03:23.660 --> 00:03:29.040
Dave's job is to find, digitize and archive lost data from the Apollo era

38
00:03:29.040 --> 00:03:32.600
so they can be used by researchers for generations to come.

39
00:03:32.600 --> 00:03:39.920
Uncovering these data could help scientists make new discoveries about our Moon, as we plan to send humans back by 2024.

40
00:03:39.920 --> 00:03:43.580
But tracking down the information is an incredible challenge.

41
00:03:43.580 --> 00:03:50.380
DAVE: There wasn't a lot done with these data. So when we went back to them, we had to dust these things off.

42
00:03:50.380 --> 00:03:56.312
You know, a lot of things you just can't figure out by looking at them... and so we had to go find old documentation,

43
00:03:56.312 --> 00:04:00.460
we had to try to find the principal investigators or the other scientists who worked on the experiments,

44
00:04:00.460 --> 00:04:08.118
or the technicians who built the experiments and find out from them how the things worked, and how the data were returned, and that sort of thing.

45
00:04:08.118 --> 00:04:15.720
NARRATOR: When he began his search for data, Dave approached scientist Patrick Taylor to ask him and his colleagues what needed to be saved.

46
00:04:15.720 --> 00:04:20.800
PAT: Well we looked at each other and we said...

47
00:04:20.800 --> 00:04:27.755
each instrument, each program was very highly reviewed and vetted. They're all good. They're all important. You can't just rate them.

48
00:04:27.755 --> 00:04:33.880
NARRATOR: That's Pat. He's a NASA scientist who thinks that every bit of data is an important piece of the puzzle.

49
00:04:33.880 --> 00:04:37.580
Dave's restoration of old heat flow data, for example,

50
00:04:37.580 --> 00:04:40.320
helped Pat make a new discovery about our Moon.

51
00:04:40.320 --> 00:04:54.000
PAT: So while we didn't have a lot of data, we found enough to confirm that the lunar surface underneath the surface was heating up

52
00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:57.560
instead of reaching equilibrium temperature.

53
00:04:57.560 --> 00:05:04.580
NARRATOR: The restored data allowed Pat and his team to study the transfer of heat through the Moon's surface and subsurface.

54
00:05:04.580 --> 00:05:09.400
They learned that the Moon is a little bit more active than previously thought.

55
00:05:09.400 --> 00:05:12.200
When the Apollo astronauts trekked across the Moon,

56
00:05:12.200 --> 00:05:15.500
their footprints disturbed the Moon's surface,

57
00:05:15.500 --> 00:05:19.180
changing the way it absorbs and reflects light and heat.

58
00:05:19.180 --> 00:05:26.900
Knowing how heat moves through the Moon helps us figure out how it formed, how it evolved and what it's made of.

59
00:05:26.900 --> 00:05:33.771
PAT: So the heat flow tells us, is the Moon dead? Is it alive? How much is it alive? What's the distribution

60
00:05:33.771 --> 00:05:36.820
of radioactive elements in the near surface?

61
00:05:36.820 --> 00:05:48.620
And our data showed that if you disturb the structure on the lunar regolith, you'll change its thermal history.

62
00:05:48.620 --> 00:05:55.120
When we go back to the Moon with robotic missions, the heat flow instrument has to be designed

63
00:05:55.120 --> 00:06:00.910
so as not to overly disturb the surrounding area where it's going into the hole.

64
00:06:00.910 --> 00:06:05.920
So in that regard, our work is important for future missions.

65
00:06:05.920 --> 00:06:10.180
NARRATOR: And according to Pat, the hunt for data is far from finished.

66
00:06:10.180 --> 00:06:15.010
PAT: I don't think the search for data is over with.There's got to be more data out there!

67
00:06:15.010 --> 00:06:18.180
The Moon has still got a lot of secrets it's keeping.

68
00:06:18.180 --> 00:06:23.100
NARRATOR: To find those secrets, Dave and his team look for first-hand sources,

69
00:06:23.100 --> 00:06:28.260
the people who were there during the Apollo era and can help shed some light on what was collected.

70
00:06:28.260 --> 00:06:34.077
DAVE: Luckily, there were still an awful lot of people around from the Apollo days who still remembered this stuff, for one thing,

71
00:06:34.077 --> 00:06:38.600
which I find amazing. I mean, I try to figure out what I was doing 2 weeks ago,

72
00:06:38.600 --> 00:06:41.260
and these guys are remembering what they did 40 years ago.

73
00:06:41.260 --> 00:06:44.840
NARRATOR: Sometimes, Dave's research involves making house calls.

74
00:06:44.840 --> 00:06:50.280
In 2016, he and his team visited the man who worked at NASA during the Apollo era,

75
00:06:50.280 --> 00:06:52.220
a man named Otto Berg.

76
00:06:52.220 --> 00:06:54.920
DAVE: He was a principal investigator for one of the instruments.

77
00:06:54.920 --> 00:07:00.600
We did get hold of him, and we talked to him, and he said oh yeah, he had all these detailed notebooks

78
00:07:00.600 --> 00:07:06.460
and if we would like to look at them, we could come visit him and take a look at the notebooks.

79
00:07:06.460 --> 00:07:09.560
Now this is this fellow was 90-something years old

80
00:07:09.560 --> 00:07:12.620
and we called him the day before...

81
00:07:12.620 --> 00:07:17.180
he said 'well, I just got out of hospital, I've been really sick, I'm not feeling well,

82
00:07:17.180 --> 00:07:20.180
but you can still come up, but I may not be able to talk that long.'

83
00:07:20.180 --> 00:07:24.520
We went up and sure enough he did look a little sick, a little tired.

84
00:07:24.520 --> 00:07:27.520
He brought out his books and he started talking to us.

85
00:07:27.520 --> 00:07:33.140
NARRATOR: Otto worked on an experiment that analyzed cosmic dust from the Moon's surface.

86
00:07:33.140 --> 00:07:39.870
DAVE: While he was talking to us, you could see him, suddenly start to lighten up and then he just kept talking and talking

87
00:07:39.870 --> 00:07:44.256
about his experiment and he just seemed like he was getting better and better while he was talking about it.

88
00:07:44.256 --> 00:07:47.880
We ended up being there for like two and a half hours talking to him about all this stuff

89
00:07:47.880 --> 00:07:53.764
and then he ended up lending us his notebooks, his personal notebooks, so that we could scan them.

90
00:07:53.764 --> 00:07:57.460
They were really beautiful notebooks, I mean, he had written down everything really carefully.

91
00:07:57.460 --> 00:08:03.450
He had made graphs, all different colored pens he had used to highlight different things.

92
00:08:03.450 --> 00:08:12.200
They were really quite something, and we scanned every one of them and now, I feel like all this stuff is is completely saved... forever.

93
00:08:12.200 --> 00:08:14.780
[MUSIC]

94
00:08:14.780 --> 00:08:22.100
NARRATOR: Otto Berg passed away in January of 2017. He was 99 years old.

95
00:08:22.100 --> 00:08:28.740
The work that he dedicated his career to is now free and accessible through the National Space Science Data Center --

96
00:08:28.740 --> 00:08:34.120
for anyone who wants to learn more about Earth's closest neighbor.

97
00:08:34.120 --> 00:08:39.240
Thanks to Dave's team, current and future scientists can use information like this

98
00:08:39.240 --> 00:08:45.430
to paint a more detailed picture of the Moon.  Data from the Apollo era gives us a window to the past,

99
00:08:45.430 --> 00:08:51.380
as NASA plans to send astronauts back to the surface of the Moon in the near-future.

100
00:08:51.380 --> 00:08:57.200
Data collected with today's technology, combined with information preserved from the Apollo program,

101
00:08:57.200 --> 00:09:01.000
places us at the edge of new discoveries.

102
00:09:01.000 --> 00:09:08.034
DAVE: In so many ways, this really is the golden age of understanding our solar system. There's all sorts of amazing missions out there now

103
00:09:08.034 --> 00:09:15.300
that are returning data at a rates and with instruments that we couldn't have even dreamed of 40 years ago.

104
00:09:15.300 --> 00:09:21.169
NASA is probably doing more science and for understanding of the solar system

105
00:09:21.169 --> 00:09:24.940
and the universe than, than ever.

106
00:09:24.940 --> 00:09:29.880
NARRATOR: Everything we collect, even the scribbles of a personal notebook,

107
00:09:29.880 --> 00:09:35.280
helps scientists learn more about our Moon, furthering our understanding of the universe.

108
00:09:35.280 --> 00:09:45.620
[MUSIC]

109
00:09:45.620 --> 00:09:49.460
NARRATOR: We asked you to help NASA tell the story of Apollo.

110
00:09:49.460 --> 00:09:52.960
Hundreds of people answered ... from all over the world.

111
00:09:52.960 --> 00:09:56.720
Here's what Ketan from Sugarland, Texas remembers:

112
00:09:56.720 --> 00:10:01.520
KETAN: My memory of the Apollo Moon landing is probably going to be very different

113
00:10:01.520 --> 00:10:10.664
because I was not in the US, I was a five-year-old child in Mumbai, India in 1969. We did not have a TV,

114
00:10:10.664 --> 00:10:13.460
so we did not see the event live.

115
00:10:13.460 --> 00:10:18.980
My family and some family friends -- we all saw the event a few months later,

116
00:10:18.980 --> 00:10:27.251
probably October or November 1969. My dad heard about the United States having sent a man to the Moon,

117
00:10:27.251 --> 00:10:35.100
and he wanted to give his children a first-hand look. He got the film on loan from the United States Information Service,

118
00:10:35.100 --> 00:10:38.540
hired a technician, rented a projector,

119
00:10:38.540 --> 00:10:41.820
and invited his nieces and some friends.

120
00:10:41.820 --> 00:10:46.520
We all saw the film together, projected on a wall in the living room.

121
00:10:46.620 --> 00:10:54.258
The wall must have been about 10 feet wide and 12 feet tall. It was painted white, and all the picture frames and decorations

122
00:10:54.258 --> 00:10:57.520
were taken off for the film projection.

123
00:10:57.520 --> 00:11:04.840
I clearly remember that that was the day when I fell in love with everything associated with America -- the country,

124
00:11:04.840 --> 00:11:13.200
the people, the inventions and NASA.  My deep interest in science is partly because of that film.

125
00:11:13.200 --> 00:11:17.180
Thanks NASA, for everything!

126
00:11:17.180 --> 00:11:20.640
NARRATOR: Thanks, Ketan for sharing the story with us.

127
00:11:20.640 --> 00:11:23.460
What do you remember about Apollo?

128
00:11:23.460 --> 00:11:28.300
Or what space exploration, do you hope you get to see in your lifetime?

129
00:11:28.300 --> 00:11:37.916
NASA wants to hear your Apollo stories. Visit nasa.gov/apollostories to learn how to get involved.

130
00:11:37.916 --> 00:11:43.660
This audio series was produced at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

131
00:11:43.660 --> 00:11:54.500
The NASA Explorers: Apollo team includes Micheala Sosby, Haley Reed, and Katie Atkinson, with original music by Daniel Wytanis and Lee Rosevere.

132
00:11:54.500 --> 00:12:04.860
If you like this NASA Explorers series, help us grow by sharing the show with a friend or leaving us a review. Thank you.

133
00:12:04.860 --> 00:12:11.497
[MUSIC]