Editing Openai/67c4e193-e008-8008-8d82-c239519e3d5a (section)

==== Apollo 17 – Final Moon Landing Mission ====

Mission Data: Apollo 17 (Dec 1972) was the final Apollo moon landing, with the longest surface stay and a heavy science focus. It also produced a large amount of telemetry. Apollo 17 carried the same type of rover and TV system as Apollo 16, so live color video was sent from the lunar surface (famously, the Apollo 17 rover’s camera caught the last moments on the Moon, including Gene Cernan’s closing words). Those broadcasts were recorded and survive on videotapes and films. Apollo 17’s Command Module had the SIM bay instruments (including a radar to probe beneath the lunar surface, a far-UV spectrometer, etc.), all sending data via telemetry. Additionally, Apollo 17 hosted an on-board tape recorder in the Command Module that was used extensively to record sensor data during passes behind the Moon (especially for the radar experiment). That on-board tape was played back to Earth when in contact, meaning the ground stations would have recorded the downlinked dump on telemetry tape as well.

After Apollo 17, with the program ending, one might think the data tapes would be saved as historical artifacts, but that was not the case. Apollo 17’s telemetry reels went into the same WNRC storage as previous missions. In fact, because Apollo 17 was late 1972, its tapes likely joined the others just before NASA began pulling tapes for reuse. By 1981–82, Apollo 17 tapes would have been among the thousands removed by Goddard from the archivesnasa.gov<ref>{{cite web|title=nasa.gov|url=https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/static/history/alsj/a11/Apollo_11_TV_Tapes_Report.pdf#:~:text=9|publisher=nasa.gov|access-date=2025-12-06}}</ref>. None have been reported as surviving. Thus, Apollo 17’s original telemetry tapes are presumed lost along with the rest of Apollo’s. NASA’s 2009 report did not single out Apollo 17 in any way that would suggest some tapes remained; it was a blanket “Apollo-era telemetry tapes no longer exist” aside from the Apollo 9 anomalynasa.gov<ref>{{cite web|title=nasa.gov|url=https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/static/history/alsj/a11/Apollo_11_TV_Tapes_Report.pdf#:~:text=searchers%20never%20found%20what%20they,Apollo%2011%20moon%20landing%20and|publisher=nasa.gov|access-date=2025-12-06}}</ref>.

Scientific Telemetry: Apollo 17’s ALSEP was the most advanced, including experiments like a Lunar Surface Gravimeter (which unfortunately never worked properly) and others similar to Apollo 16’s. The ALSEP network was shut down only about 5 years after Apollo 17, in September 1977, due to budget cutspoikiloblastic.wordpress.com<ref>{{cite web|title=poikiloblastic.wordpress.com|url=https://poikiloblastic.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/the-long-road-to-alsep-data-recovery/#:~:text=When%20the%20Apollo%20Lunar%20Surface,Analog%20magnetic|publisher=poikiloblastic.wordpress.com|date=2013-02-22|access-date=2025-12-06}}</ref>. By then, Apollo 17’s ALSEP had sent a trove of data. The archiving woes discussed earlier absolutely included Apollo 17. In fact, Apollo 17 being the last, its data from 1973–77 made up a big portion of those ARCSAV tapes. The records show 3,270 ARCSAV tapes from April 1973 to Feb 1976 were storedpoikiloblastic.wordpress.com<ref>{{cite web|title=poikiloblastic.wordpress.com|url=https://poikiloblastic.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/the-long-road-to-alsep-data-recovery/#:~:text=Records%20show%20something%20like%203270,goes%20cold%20after%20they%20were|publisher=poikiloblastic.wordpress.com|date=2013-02-22|access-date=2025-12-06}}</ref> – that timeframe covers Apollo 17’s first 3 years of data. Then the massive withdrawal in 1981 removed 2,800 of those tapes (likely including Apollo 17’s) and many were ruined in the floodpoikiloblastic.wordpress.com<ref>{{cite web|title=poikiloblastic.wordpress.com|url=https://poikiloblastic.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/the-long-road-to-alsep-data-recovery/#:~:text=analog%20tapes%20from%20WNRC%2C%20prompted,basement%20of%20GSFC%20during%20cleanup|publisher=poikiloblastic.wordpress.com|date=2013-02-22|access-date=2025-12-06}}</ref>. However, the recovery of ~450 tapes in 2010 included tapes from April–June 1975poikiloblastic.wordpress.com<ref>{{cite web|title=poikiloblastic.wordpress.com|url=https://poikiloblastic.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/the-long-road-to-alsep-data-recovery/#:~:text=,data%20tapes%2C%20and%20reprocessed%20tapes|publisher=poikiloblastic.wordpress.com|date=2013-02-22|access-date=2025-12-06}}</ref>. Those would contain Apollo 17 ALSEP data for that period. Indeed, the ALSEP recovery team managed to restore Apollo 17’s heat flow experiment data and other datasets, similar to Apollo 15’s. One published paper in 2019 examined Apollo 17’s heat flow and long-term subsurface temperature trend, explicitly using data recovered from the 1975 tapesagupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com<ref>{{cite web|title=agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com|url=https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018JE005579#:~:text=Examination%20of%20the%20Long%E2%80%90Term%20Subsurface,of%20the%20ARCSAV%20tapes|publisher=agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com|access-date=2025-12-06}}</ref>. It notes those tapes accounted for <10% of the total Apollo 17 heat flow data – implying the rest had to be gathered from other sources (like daily telemetry prints or earlier tapes if available)ig.utexas.edu<ref>{{cite web|title=ig.utexas.edu|url=https://ig.utexas.edu/news/2019/apollo-nakamura/#:~:text=,some%20reason%20they%20lost%20them|publisher=ig.utexas.edu|access-date=2025-12-06}}</ref>. The end result is that Apollo 17’s ALSEP data gaps have been largely filled in the final archives. Apollo 17’s Lunar Ejecta and Meteorites (LEAM) experiment data and other instrument readings have been compiled from the best available sources (some were archived by PIs originally).

Apollo 17 also had a orbital mapping radar (Apollo Lunar Sounder Experiment) that recorded data on the onboard tape recorder. Much of that experiment’s data was actually not transmitted live but stored on tape and only partially downlinked; some of it was later recovered from that onboard tape after the mission (the tape cassette was brought back to Earth). Therefore, Apollo 17’s orbital radar data was saved on a physical tape cassette that the astronauts returned – which NASA has and was able to read out separately (not a telemetry downlink tape, but an onboard data storage tape). That is an interesting exception: the raw data of the Lunar Sounder exists (and has been digitized by scientists in the 2010s) because it wasn’t solely reliant on radio telemetry. For other Apollo 17 orbital instruments (like the infrared radiometer), the data downlinked was archived by the respective science team.

Current Status: Mission telemetry tapes: No Apollo 17 telemetry tapes are publicly accounted for. After Apollo 17, NASA did send some Apollo materials to the National Archives – but primarily documents and photographs, not the magnetic telemetry tapes. So in the National Archives’ Apollo holdings, one finds things like mission reports, press kits, technical drawings, etc., but not the raw telemetry reels (those remained under NASA control until they were discarded). There haven’t been any rumors of Apollo 17 tape finds, so presumably they were reused or sit anonymously erased. Mission documentation is plentiful: Apollo 17’s final report, the Apollo 17 Technical Crew Debrief, etc., capture the mission events and data. The mission control audio for Apollo 17 was recorded on the 30-track tapes like the others; those tapes survived. Efforts are underway (or planned) to digitize Apollo 17’s 150+ hours of mission control audio. Already, the air-to-ground channel for Apollo 17 is available on the “Apollo 17 in Real Time” website, along with hundreds of photographs and some video clips. The live TV video from Apollo 17 (such as the ceremonies on the Moon, geological demonstrations, etc.) exists in archived form and has been digitized; it can be viewed through NASA’s archives or the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal site.

Scientific data tapes: Apollo 17’s ALSEP and other experiment data have been reconstructed and archived digitally. The PDS archive contains Apollo 17 heat flow data, seismic event catalogs (including Apollo 17’s seismometer contributions), and so onpds-geosciences.wustl.edu<ref>{{cite web|title=pds-geosciences.wustl.edu|url=https://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/apollo/index.htm#:~:text=Apollo%20Data%20from%20Individual%20Investigators,SEED%20and%20ASCII%20table%20format|publisher=pds-geosciences.wustl.edu|access-date=2025-12-06}}</ref>. If some Apollo 17 ALSEP tapes had survived in storage, they likely were among the few sent back to WNRC (the records show none after Feb 1976, perhaps because Apollo 17 data after that might not have been archived at all)lpi.usra.edu<ref>{{cite web|title=lpi.usra.edu|url=https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/1103.pdf#:~:text=Tapes%20www,to%20the%20Washington%20National|publisher=lpi.usra.edu|access-date=2025-12-06}}</ref>. It’s worth noting that Apollo 17’s ALSEP was off for the final 21 months (end of 1975 to Sept 1977) – those last years of data were never put on ARCSAV tapes because the archiving was halted in early 1976lpi.usra.edu<ref>{{cite web|title=lpi.usra.edu|url=https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/1103.pdf#:~:text=Tapes%20www,to%20the%20Washington%20National|publisher=lpi.usra.edu|access-date=2025-12-06}}</ref>. They effectively existed only as real-time feed. Some of those final transmissions were captured in summary form (monthly reports, etc.), but not in full detail. So in that sense, one could consider that portion of Apollo 17 data “missing” – but it’s not a case of tapes lost, rather tapes never made due to funding cuts. In any event, by now the Apollo 17 ALSEP archive is as complete as it can be, given recovery of earlier data and absence of late data, and it’s available for research.

No known Apollo 17 telemetry tape reels are in any museum or collection; Apollo 17 hardware and memorabilia went to the Smithsonian or given to crew, but telemetry tapes were not treated as memorabilia. The legacy of Apollo 17’s data is carried in the scientific literature and the digital archives rather than original tapes.