Whales and spacecraft data
Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2010 9:57 am
There's a fascinating connection between commercial whaling and the preservation of spacecraft data. An article in the March 12 issue of Science talks about the effort to preserve spacecraft images of the Earth and Moon from the 1960's and 1970's that are on the verge of being lost since they are on obsolete tapes.
"But during the 1980s, the agency [NASA] lost much of its old high-quality data. Its early tracking stations recorded satellite data on high-resolution master tapes that used whale oil to bind iron particles to the acetate. The whale oil made the tapes far more durable, but when commercial whaling whas phased out in the mid-1980s, NASA couldn't get such long-lasting tapes. So it reused old ones. NASA engineers taped over some 200,000 previously recorded master tapes, including high-resolution records as diverse as early Landsat satellites and Apollo 11, and preserved only low-resolution copies."
There is now an effort to restore ancient Ampex tape machines and copy the remaining data before it is lost forever.
"But during the 1980s, the agency [NASA] lost much of its old high-quality data. Its early tracking stations recorded satellite data on high-resolution master tapes that used whale oil to bind iron particles to the acetate. The whale oil made the tapes far more durable, but when commercial whaling whas phased out in the mid-1980s, NASA couldn't get such long-lasting tapes. So it reused old ones. NASA engineers taped over some 200,000 previously recorded master tapes, including high-resolution records as diverse as early Landsat satellites and Apollo 11, and preserved only low-resolution copies."
There is now an effort to restore ancient Ampex tape machines and copy the remaining data before it is lost forever.