Shortly after the conclusion of the Apollo 11 Moonwalk, Goldstone lead USB engineer
Bill Wood replayed the videotape of the scan-converted television and
took a sequence of around 80 photographs with his 35mm film still camera.
He did not regard his set of photos as being particularly unique,
since a Public Affairs official had been taking Polaroid photos of the much
better slow scan TV in a specially equipped trailer (one known surviving example
here). In addition, it was assumed that
the slow scan telemetry tapes would be preserved.
During his participation in the search for the Apollo 11 slow
scan TV tapes, Bill printed the negatives for the first time in late 2006.
Bill writes –
“I took the photos after the Moon set at Goldstone late
in the evening on 20 July local California time (21 July UTC).
My USB crew had the 6 PM to 6 AM shift at Goldstone. I set
up my Nikon F camera on a tripod in front of the RCA Scan Converter 14-inch
HP TV monitor and played back the Ampex VR-660 recording of the scan converter
output while snapping away with the camera.”
These photos demonstrate the problems the Goldstone scan converter
operator had at the start of the Moonwalk TV. While the slow-scan TV being received
from the Moon was of high quality, the scan-converter (which converted the 320
line, 10 frames per second, picture to a 525 line, 30 frames per second picture)
was producing a very dark NTSC output. This can be seen in the first of Bill’s
photos.
Not long after, the scan-converter settings were improved, and
the picture was much brighter however, by this stage, Houston TV was sending
the pictures from Honeysuckle Creek, and then Parkes, out to the worldwide TV
broadcast.
Even with the improved settings, the Goldstone scan-converter
did not perform as well as those at Honeysuckle Creek and Sydney (which processed
the Parkes picture). Nevertheless, Bill’s sequence of photos is a unique
record of mankind’s first excursion on the Moon – and is the most
extensive set of photos of the scan-converted TV taken at the tracking stations.
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| Apollo Goldstone Lead-USB Engineer Bill Wood (standing at
left) – photo taken during the Apollo 10 mission. |
A more recent photo. |
