Four recoverable film camera capsules were carried aboard the S-IC stage. Two were located in the forward interstage looking forward to view S-IC/S-II separation and S-II engine start. The other two were mounted on top of the S-IC stage LOX tank and contained pulse cameras which viewed aft into the LOX tank through fiber optics bundles. One of the LOX tank capsules was recovered by helicopter at 00:19:30 at latitude 30.22° north and longitude 73.97° west. Despite film damage caused by sea water and dye marker which had leaked into the camera compartment, the film provided usable data. It was not known if the other three capsules were ejected. There were also two television cameras on the S-IC to view propulsion and control system components. Both provided good quality data.

SOURCE: NASA History SP-4029

APOLLO 11

APOLLO 11
Luna Cognita's Files

LunaCognita
May 18, 2008

If they lied about this, just imagine what else they lied to you about! 

• TELEVISION ON THE MOON! - Or... In Space No One Can Tell You Are Using The CBS COLOR SYSTEM! - [Outside Link][Archived]
• Image-Tube Systems - W C Livingston - Harvard Abstracts Full Document - [Outside Link][Archived]
• Lunar Television Camera Pre-Installation Acceptance - MSC-SESD-28-105.pdf - [Outside Link][Archived]
• Honeysuckle Creek, Australia
• Neil Armstrong reads the plaque on the ladder of the LM – a Polaroid photo of the TV picture received by the Parkes Radio Telescope. Note the uniformly bright, detailed picture, including the reflection of Neil and the LM in Buzz Aldrin’s visor (center).Right: A frame of the official NASA recording, after the TV had beenprocessed and relayed to Houston. This is what the world saw.
• The Search for the Original Apollo 11 Moonwalk TV Tapes - [Outside Link][Archived]
• The Search for the Apollo 11 TV Tapes
• The Search for the Apollo 11 SSTV Tapes  - [Outside Link][PDF][Archived]
• Missing Apollo 11 Tapes
• Apollo TV Tapes: The Search Continues - Space.com - posted: 03 November 2006
• One Giant Screwup for Mankind - Wired News - January 2007
• Update: Apollo 11 Tapes - 08.15.06 - NASA
• Search Is on for Original Apollo 11 Footage - Read the article - hear the NPR radio program on  this issue!

Richard Hess linked to a report from this site on July 14th.  I couldn't get that link to work.  But there is an alternate link provided on an associated page. It looks as if my assumption was correct, the Apollo moon landing tapes were sent to NARA's Federal Records Center in 1970, then called back by NASA some time beween 1975-1979, when NASA pulled back almost all of a large series of records.  The moon tapes should have gone back to the FRC and eventually been accessioned into NARA as "Permanent," but this never happened.

See http://www.honeysucklecreek.net.nyud.net:8080/Apollo_11/tapes/ for a site which has a flyer, a report, and the actual NARA SF 135 records transmittal form. 

The form is at;
http://www.honeysucklecreek.net.nyud.net:8080/Apollo_11/tapes/Accession_255-69A4099_med.jpg
The flyer is at; http://www.honeysucklecreek.net.nyud.net:8080/Apollo_11/tapes/Apollo_11_Tape_Search_Flyer.pdf
The full report is at;
http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/apollo11/The_Apollo11_SSTV_Tapes_Search.pdf

I'm still downloading it now; it's a large file and I only have dial-up.  If I have any further observations, I'll send 'em along. It would have been much safer for the tapes to have remained at the FRC, you can see they have good item control over such materials when they are held in NARA facilities. 

Maarja

Jason Townsend
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA personnel continue to sift through 37-year-old records in their attempt to locate the magnetic tapes that recorded the original Apollo 11 video in 1969. The original tapes may be at the Goddard Space Flight Center, which requested their return from the National Archives in the 1970s, or at another location within the NASA archiving system. Despite the challenges of the search, NASA does not consider the tapes to be lost.

The tapes were sent from Goddard to a storage facility of the National Archives in late 1969. This kind of transfer is standard for government records, whether contracts, memos, photographs or space telemetry. Among the 2,614 boxes of Apollo mission tapes that went to the facility, the original Apollo 11 may have been among them. Between 1975 and 1979, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center recalled all but two of the 2,614 boxes. The remaining two boxes included telemetry tapes from Apollo 9, leading engineers to believe that these shipments contained most of the Apollo related materials.

First-generation copies of the converted video from Apollo 11 as well as other first-generation copies and some original versions of the converted video for the Apollo 12 through Apollo 17 flights are still in NASA Johnson Space Center's Informational Resources Directorate's video vault in Houston.

About 18 months ago, NASA Goddard began an informal search for the tapes after some inquiries from retirees from the space agency and others from the Apollo program. NASA engineers are hopeful that when the tapes are found, they can use today's digital technology to provide a version of the moonwalk that is much better quality than what we have today. Goddard engineers were able to extract data from a nearly-identical type of tape recorded in 1969 of an Apollo simulation from the Honeysuckle Creek, Australia tracking station providing optimism that when the tapes are located, we can preserve original video.

In the event the tapes are found, NASA Goddard is taking steps to make sure all the unique hardware required to process the Apollo 11 moonwalk tapes is still around and can be used to make digital reproductions of the tapes that will be kept with the NASA History Office to make sure the video is protected and restored as needed.

NASA has also asked that any paperwork related to the transfer of the tapes from the National Records Center to NASA Goddard and paperwork related to the NASA Johnson Space Center's transfer of tapes to the National Archives be preserved and digitized to prevent further deterioration of these historical records.

Because of power limitations, Apollo 11 used specially developed slow-scan video that had to be converted into a format that could be broadcast over commercial television. The original signal was transmitted at 10 frames per second and had to be converted to 60 frames per second to be viewed on your TV set.

The signal originated on the Moon, traveled through the emptiness of space back to Earth, and was received by tracking stations on the ground in Goldstone, California; Parkes, Australia; and Honeysuckle Creek, Australia. These three tracking stations recorded the original signal that included the television video, as well as voice, telemetry, and biomedical data. The data was recorded onto magnetic tapes, and simultaneously converted into a U.S. broadcast format for transmission to Houston and final release to U.S. television networks. The equipment used to convert the signal unfortunately caused some unavoidable loss of image quality.

Related Links:

• Apollo 11 Multimedia Flash Feature
• National Archives Listing of NASA Holdings

Source: http://www.smecc.org/television.htm

MASSIVE "TV ON THE MOON" TECHNICAL
 DOCUMENTATION LIBRARY
From the site of:

Unless otherwise noted, documents scanned and converted to PDF format by Bill Wood. (See the accompanying notes on the conversion process ).

• Proceedings of the Apollo Unified S-Band Technical Conference, Goddard Space Flight Center, July 14-15, 1965 ( 24 Mb PDF ); K.E. Peltzer, Program Committee Chairman, Goddard Spaceflight Center, 1965; NASA SP-87. PDF document courtesy Bill Wood and Neil Sandford. 
• Apollo Unified S-Band System ( 1.7 Mb ); K.E. Peltzer, Manned Flight Support Office, Goddard Space Flight Center, April 1966; NASA TM-X-55492 / X-506-66-156. PDF document courtesy Bill Wood. 
• Lunar TV Camera: Statement of Work (Final Draft) ( 3.4 Mb PDF ); NASA/MSC , 15 August 1966. 
• TV Show of the Century: A Travelogue with No Atmosphere ( 1.6 Mb PDF ); Stanley Lebar and Charles P. Hoffman, Electronics, March 6 1967. Document courtesy Stan Lebar. 
• Lunar Television Camera: Pre-Installation Acceptance Test Plan, NASA/MSC-SESD-28-105 ( 0.5 Mb PDF ) 12 March 1968. 
• The Lunar Television Camera, E.L. Svensson, Westinghouse Engineer, No. 3, March 1968, pp. 46-51 ( 0.5 Mb PDF ) Document courtesy Stan Lebar. 
• Apollo Lunar Television Camera: Operations Manual ( 3.9 Mb PDF ); Stan Lebar, Westinghouse Defense and Space Center, 30 August 1968. Document courtesy Stan Lebar. 
• Apollo 10 Color Television ( 152k PDF ); Westinghouse Defense and Space Center News Release, 16 May 1969. Document courtesy Stan Lebar. 
• First Color TV from Space ( 207k PDF ); Warren C. Wetmore, Aviation Week and Space Technology, p18-20, 26 May 1969. Document courtesy Stan Lebar. 
• Mankind's Giant Leap ( 104k PDF ); Robert Hotz, Aviation Week and Space Technology, p17, 28 July 1969. Document courtesy Stan Lebar. 
• Network Controller's Mission Report Apollo 11 ( 5.0 Mb PDF ); 15 August 1969. Document courtesy Mike Stevens, GSFC Network Operations Manager during Apollo 11. 
• Communications on the Moon ( 3.6 Mb PDF ); Electronics World, August 1969. Document courtesy Stan Lebar. 
• Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN) Postmission Report on the AS-506 (Apollo 11) Mission ( 17 Mb PDF ), Goddard Spaceflight Center; February 1970. Document courtesy Mike Stevens, GSFC Network Operations Manager during Apollo 11. 
• Apollo Color Television Camera ( 0.8 Mb PDF ); L.L. Niemyer, Jr., Westinghouse Defense and Space Center, 16 September 1969. Document courtesy Paul Coan. 
• Apollo 13 Television ( 1.7 Mb PDF ); Westinghouse Press Release, 1970. Document courtesy Stan Lebar. 
• Ground-Controlled Television Assembly: Operation and Checkout Manual ( 7.0 Mb PDF ); RCA, 24 May 1971. Document courtesy Bill Perry, MSC. 
• Apollo Color Television Subsystem: Operation and Training Manual ( 3.8 Mb PDF ); Westinghouse, 1 June 1971. Document courtesy Stan Lebar. 
• Ground-Controlled Television Assembly: Interim Final Report ( 4.2 Mb PDF ); RCA R-3838F, 25 February 1972. Document courtesy Bill Perry, MSC. 
• Ground-Controlled Television Assembly: Final Report ( 8.6 Mb PDF ); RCA R-3901-F, 29 December 1972. Document courtesy NASA Technical Reports Server. 
• Apollo Experience Report - TV Systems ( 1.7 Mb PDF ); Paul P. Coan, Manned Spaceflight Center Television Subsystem Manager, NASA Technical Note TN D-7476, November 1973.
• Shooting the Apollo Moonwalks ( 0.15 Mb ); Sam Russell, RCA Project Engineer for the Apollo 15-17 GCTA Color Television. Used with permission.
• The Color War Goes to the Moon ( 0.8 Mb ); Stan Lebar, Westinghouse Lunar Camera Project Leader. Document courtesy Stan Lebar. 
• 35 Years Ago, "One Small Step..." ( 0.4 Mb PDF ), which is an account of RCA engineer Jack Yanosov and the development of the PLSS radio unit. John Dilks (K2TQN), QST, February 2005. Document courtesy Maty Weinberg, ARRL (American Radio Relay League):The National Association for Amateur Radio. Used with permission. 
• Comparison photographs the Apollo 11 Lunar Television as seen at Goldstone, Honeysuckle Creek, and Houston ( 4.4 Mb ); Colin Mackellar, Editor of the Honeysuckle Creek website, December 2005. Used with permission.