Aug. 17, 2006
 
EDITORIAL: NASA’s Carelessness is Out of This World
 
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
 
Thirty-seven years after Neil Armstrong stepped into history by being the first human to walk on the moon, the footage that recorded that act for posterity is missing. So much for posterity. Depending on whom one asks at NASA, the magnetic tapes are either lost or temporarily misplaced.
 
Many at the space agency are splitting hairs over what seems like a meaningless semantic exercise because the loss of such a significant part of America's short history on the moon is so embarrassing.
 
The tapes were originally stored at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland before they were transferred to the National Archives in 1970. In 1984, the tapes were returned to Goddard. They've been missing ever since.
 
Imagine misplacing the Hope Diamond or the "Mona Lisa" and not realizing it for decades. That's the equivalent of what happened when researchers realized that 700 boxes of high-quality telemetry tape beamed from the moon on July 21, 1969, was unaccounted for by NASA's inventory control.
 
To add insult to injury, footage from the first five Apollo missions is also missing. In each case, the information imbedded on the tapes is in danger of crumbling into dust because of the passage of time. The images on the tapes can't be viewed without technology that is scheduled to be decommissioned later this year.
 
Given the monumental historical value of the Apollo missions, these images should have been archived and treated like national treasures. There is some optimism, though guarded, that the tapes will eventually turn up. They have no "street value," so criminals have no incentive to steal them. In the meantime, we still have the grainy copies that were broadcast around the world, though they're a poor substitute for the original sharply defined images we've yet to see.
 
Houston, the shorthand for Mission Control in "Apollo 13," isn't the only agency with a problem. All mankind is poorer for it if this footage fails to show up.
 
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