NASA makes Apollo moon landing sound recordings available to public

Image: NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has given the general public access to all the sound recordings made during the Apollo 11 moon landing 49 years ago.

On July 20, 1969, humankind first stepped foot on the moon, and the men who represented our species went down the history books as heroes. During that fateful day, the astronauts in space constantly kept in contact with Mission Control in Houston. In turn, the people at Houston, and other supporting teams, did their best to assist Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to keep them on track for the mission.

The audio recordings for these conversations were finally made available to the public on July 24 through NASA’s online archive in digital audio form. The collection of soundbites amounts to 19,000 hours worth of footage. This includes conversations from the time the astronauts blasted off on July 16, 1969, to when they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24.

The conversion from tape recordings to digital format proved to be a daunting task because only one tape recorder was left functional to play the 170 remaining tapes used for the mission. The tape recorder even had to be modified to somewhat speed up the process.

The archive is completely open to those who have the spare time to sit through the thousands of hours of conversations which lead to one of mankind’s crowning achievements. The sound files can also be downloaded and listened to like an audio book while going through the daily commute. Just prepare a really spacious memory card. /ra

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