Parkes hi-resTV tapes of Apollo 11 surface activity

From: Allen Thomson (thomsona_at_flash.net)
Date: 07/24/04 

Date: 24 Jul 2004 09:01:27 -0700

(I sent this to FPSpace, but thought it might be of interest here
also.)

http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/apollo11/ has an interesting little
write-up on their reception of the TV images of the initial Apollo 11
surface operations that notes,

  The TV pictures from the Moon were narrow band slow-scan TV, that
  is, 10 frames per second (non-interlaced) and 320 lines per frame.
  In order to broadcast them to the waiting world, the pictures had
  to first be converted to the commercial TV standards...

  "For Apollo 11, an RCA scan-converter was used, which operated on
  an optical conversion principle. The pictures were displayed on a
  10-inch black-and-white monitor and a Vidicon TK22 camera was
  pointed at the screen. As each frame of the 10 frames per second
  picture was received, it was displayed on the monitor. The camera
  was gated to scan a single field at the EIA (NTSC) rate of 1/60th
  of a second, that is it did not take a picture until the 10-inch
  monitor had completed displaying a full frame. The output of the
  camera was transmitted and simultaneously recorded on magnetic disc.
  The disc recording was then played back a further five times and
  transmitted. While the disc recorder was playing back, the monitor
  screen was blacked out and the next frame started displaying. The
  monitor had enough persistence that it retained the picture, and
  RCA built special circuits to adjust for any loss of brightness
  between the top and bottom of the picture. In this way, a 30
  frames per second (60 interlaced fields per second) TV was
  produced - with only one in six fields being live. "

Then it provides a comparison of the image quality as received at
Parkes

http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/apollo11/images/Parkes_Apollo11_TV_SSTV_Polaroid_small.jpg

vs what we saw on our home TVs:

http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/apollo11/images/Parkes_Apollo11_TV_commercial_small.jpg
and notes,

  It is clear from these comparisons, that the pre scan-converted
  SSTV images were of a higher resolution and definition and
  contained much more detail than was actually broadcast to the world.

I have to wonder what modern image processing techniques could do
with the SSTV images.

Finally, there is a real teaser:

  As the video and telemetry downlink was being received at Parkes,
  it was recorded onto 1/2 inch magnetic tapes on a Mincom M22
  instrumentation recorder at a rate of 120 inches per second.
  These tapes had to be changed every 15 minutes during the whole
  period of the moonwalk.

It would surely be nice if, somehow, those tapes have been perserved
and could be located. Anybody here know how to go about finding out
if NASA ever received copies? I imagine that the folks in Australia
have been looking for the originals.

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