An archiving error by NASA meant 173 data tapes sat in Perth, Western Australia for almost 40 years! ABC Australia said that the tapes containing information about lunar dust were lost before having been archived. They have been kept in a climate-controlled room and can now be used again to find information vital in expanding science's understanding of the moon.
The Apollo 11, 12 and 14 missions carried "dust detectors", invented by Perth physicist Brian O'Brien. T
his information was broadcast back to earth and recorded onto tapes. Brian O'Brien had access to the tapes at Sydney University, but his papers on moon dust he published with the preliminary findings failed to generate much interest at the time.
"These were the only active measurements of moon dust made during the Apollo missions, and no-one thought it was important," said O'Brien. "But it's now realised that dust, to quote Harrison Schmitt, who was the last astronaut to leave the moon, is the number one environmental problem on the moon."
A 1960s tape recorder the size of a fridge could yield valuable information from NASA's Apollo missions to the moon.
