7 ms·

Expert help needed to decode rare piece of space history: Lunokhod data tapes

148 points by pamoroso 5y ago

routerl 5y ago
> Between 1970 and 1973, the Soviet space program achieved an amazing feat: landing and driving the first remote-controlled roving robots on the Moon. These two vehicles were called Lunokhod-1 and -2, and they gathered invaluable scientific data as well as images of the surface of the Moon during their unprecedented, and still unrivaled, total of 52 kilometers of remotely controlled lunar exploration. Wow. TIL. Wish I had more signal processing know-how to help decode that footage. I'm old enough to remember programs being stored on cassette tapes, but not old enough to have any working experience with that.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Wow even at moon distances the speed of light starts to play a bit. Remote control at that distance is impressive.
- klyrs 5y ago
  Incredible. At first I assumed that was a lunar record, but Opportunity was in action for 15 years and 'only' drove 45km
- Nikbul 5y ago
  What's more impressive that this is 1970, so remote driving capabilities on that kind of distance is mindblowing. I was in NASA KSP tours, man, this tech from 1960 and 1970 looks weird and not functional today.
- frederikvs 5y ago
  Interesting side note : the people who built the Lunokhod moon rover were later called in to help with the Chernobyl cleanup. They had experience with remote-controlled radiation-hardened rovers. There's an interesting documentary on Curiositystream about the Lunokhod program too.
  - sharken 5y ago
    As for results in the cleanup of Chernobyl, they did not fare that well. About 10% of the roof was cleared before radioactivity made it impossible to continue. Though that effort probably saved lives, so mission accomplished I'd say. https://spacecentre.co.uk/blog-post/the-moon-rovers-that-helped-clean-up-chernobyl/ https://spacecentre.co.uk/blog-post/the-moon-rovers-that-hel...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
13of40 5y ago
Just from what I hear on the video, I would say a few things: 1. It sounds like it's around 9600 baud. 2. It sounds sparse. 3. At that bit rate, that amount of data doesn't contain an image. My guess would be that one track is commands being sent or telemetry being received, and the other track is maybe an operator explaining what he's doing or commenting on the decoded telemetry. Edit: I had the Russian guy in the next room translate some of it, and it sounds to me like there's a burst of data, then a comment about things like "device is on", something about lights, etc., so I'm going with the return telemetry one. Maybe they were also getting video, but it's on a different channel.
- kodi_ie 5y ago
  Actually there is a very long block of data in that sample. If your assumption of 9600 baud is correct it will equivalent to over 300kB of data - enough to send an image or part of it.
  - 13of40 5y ago
    What was the start time?
busterarm 5y ago
This sounds exactly like a scenario that openfly gave a Defcon talk on a few years ago -- about old NASA data storage technology that is on the verge of becoming unreadable and how we have to think about the formats that we currently use and preservation into the future.
- enriquto 5y ago
  Do you have a reference for that talk? (or about the "lost" nasa data). I have a kink for bizarre file formats and this got me excited...
  - busterarm 5y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctwUkz_0gbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctwUkz_0gbg
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  For the last few decades, the best practice for data archiving has been to include a machine capable of reading the data inside the box with the data itself. E.g. Inside your big crate of tapes, you include a tape reader, with printed instructions and schematics for how to read the data.
bagels 5y ago
> The owner has not disclosed the full list of contents of the tapes to me so far. Why not? Why would someone want to help without an explanation for that? Seems pretty suspect.
- paoloatti 5y ago
  The owner is very protective of these tapes and for personal reasons has found it very difficult to trust reporters. Personally, I cannot guarantee the authenticity of these tapes, although everything I have seen so far seems to confirm it. Ascertaining the status of these tapes is the first step. Let's see where it takes us.
Nikbul 5y ago
Why is it Lunokhod? It should be Lunohod (MoonWalker). Russian writing Луноход. I hope author of the blog answers my email.
- userbinator 5y ago
  Because х is romanised as kh.
  - hulitu 5y ago
    Maybe in english.
    - kingofpandora 5y ago
      It's an English-language website so why wouldn't they use English transliteration?
- aix1 5y ago
  There are many systems for romanising Russian. Most of them use kh for х (including those used by US/UK for Russian place names, names in Russian passports, road signs in Russia). Wikipedia has a handy table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Russian#Transliteration_table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Russian#Transl... As to why it is that way, I don't know. Some closely related languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian) follow different conventions. For example, the national system in Belarus transliterates х as ch and г as h.
- paoloatti 5y ago
  Hello, I'm Paolo Attivissimo, the poster of the original article. I am using the "Lunokhod" spelling because this is the spelling used by NASA and many other reference sources, including Anatoly Zak's RussianSpaceWeb http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_planetary_lunar.html http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_planetary_lunar.ht...
- js8 5y ago
  Because 'h' and 'kh' usually denote different sounds, the latter encodes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative.
foobar1962 5y ago
Consider contacting some technical experts at sound and film archives, they often keep one or two machines in running order and have knowledge in identifying material. Source: worked for Australia’s ABC Archives doing the back-end for analog tape digitisation project. Step 1 was “get working machines.”
CamperBob2 5y ago
Sounds like a job for Mike Stewart [1], or rather a quick hack over his lunch break, based on his work on the AGC. [1]: https://blog.samtec.com/post/restoring-agc-part1/ https://blog.samtec.com/post/restoring-agc-part1/
tclover 5y ago
is this legal?
- paoloatti 5y ago
  That is a good question. The legal status of these data is unclear. That is one of the reasons for publishing only a sample of the data. Personally, as a matter of opinion, I presume that these data can be published legally, based on other similar cases. But if the owner or myself are contacted by lawyers, I'll update the article.
- bserge 5y ago
  It's not legal in the USSR. But I don't think they have the resources to go after you these days.
  - tclover 5y ago
    If you think this is funny, your kind of humor is perfect for reddit
    - bserge 5y ago
      Didn't think anyone knew about that place, that's where I built my experience!
snowycat 5y ago
Asked a Russian friend of mine. The image of the page with lots of Russian text on it is about how to store magnetic tape.
femto 5y ago
You should be aiming to play the tapes once only. If you have something that can physically play the tapes without damaging them, make the highest fidelity PCM (digital) recording possible of the analogue signal, without any regard to further decoding. The tapes should then be placed in a safe place and never played again (unless you later find something wrong with your PCM capture of the analogue signal). Make a backup of your digital/PCM recording and put it in a safe place. All further decoding work is then done using a copy of your high-fidelity PCM/digital recording of the analogue signal.
- ganzuul 5y ago
  Perhaps reference what preservation standard this follows?
  - orf 5y ago
    Common sense?
jmpman 5y ago
The IBM tape lab in Tucson was used to recover the Space Shuttle Challenger tapes. They may be able to recover this data as well.
zoomablemind 5y ago
> ...“Transmission 109 of 13 May 1971. It has two parts, first part with TM, second part without TM. Length: 40' [probably minutes]”. Looking at the handwriting for reel 1, it appears that the transmission session number is rather 709, not 109. Note, that the handwriting for the second reel shows the session 509 in March of the same year. The "first" reel dates the session in May. P.S. Hard to judge about origins of the tapes, but by the looks, the reels seem more like some personal use dubs, not much an "official" storage. No reg numbers, names, very non-official. Additionally, the edge remarks on the second reel mention that some parts were dubbed on "someone-else's" recorder. This is likely noted in case the head alignment needs adjustment for better read.
- daniel_reetz 5y ago
  In Russian handwriting, the "1" has a hooked top and the "7" has a strike through the middle. This is most likely a "1". You can see a "7" in "1971". Looks like a "1" to me but I'm not a native speaker.
- Nikbul 5y ago
  If you look closely, 1 in 1971 is a lot closer than 7 that written in 109. Also as mentioned below, defining stroke in the middle with 7, and how it is written. For number 1, writing starts with upper left and goes down, that makes sense for translation from 1 to 0. For 7 you do same but middle stroke takes your hand off paper so there is no direct and smooth translation to next number. That's my reasoning for interpreting it as 109, rather than 709.
- zoomablemind 5y ago
  > ...Looking at the handwriting for reel 1, it appears that the transmission session number is rather 709, not 109. Perhaps, I'm mistaken, however in support of this reading speaks also the mission's Lunar day numbering [1] This places the March session recordings, as marked on the reel (509,...) on the 5th Lunar mission day, then May session recordings could correspond to the 7th Lunar mission day (thus 709). Again, just a hunch. Maybe the narrator announces the number clearly on that May tape. [1]:https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B4-1 https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%... Lunar-mission-day, Date-range-1971 1st, Nov/17-24/1970 2nd, Dec/8-23/1970 3rd, Jan/7-21 4th, Feb/7-20 5th, Mar/7-20 6th, Apr/6-20 7th, May/6-20 8th, Jun/4-11 9th, Jul/3-17 10th, Aug/2-16 11th, Aug/31-Sep/15 P.S. Also an interesting read is the mission PR in the state newspapers [2]. Gives an outlook at what notable was achieved on which date. So this might provide some hints about possible kind of "graphic" content on the tapes...if any, of course. [2]: http://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/bibl/osvoen-kosm-pr-sssr/1971/05.html http://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/bibl/osvoen-kosm-pr-sssr/1971...
ibaikov 5y ago
Hi. Native Russian here. Just took a quick glance, it's a very common type of tape, called svema (свема). Should be totally possible to make a digital copy. I can contact museums etc if needed. I also have folks who upscale old videos on YouTube with neutral nets, starting with first Lumiere videos to old SF tapes
The_rationalist 5y ago
An interesting project would be to reconstruct the audio from the USSR rockets that went to venus
pamoroso 5y ago
Thanks all for the suggestions and feedback. Paolo Attivissimo, the author of the linked post, is monitoring this thread.
femto 5y ago
I just extracted the audio from the sample mp4. Each data record seems to be a lead-in tone with a frequency of 3.6kHz, followed by something (data?) followed by a lead-out tone with a frequency of 3.6kHz. The spectrum of the "something" is broadened, suggesting a modulated signal, though it does have a strong peak at approximately 5943Hz.
zoomablemind 5y ago
A lot of interesting details (and photos) about the onboard TV-photo system of the Lunokhod-1 could be found on [1]. Btw, it looks like the tapes indeed may contain the photos - the session dates seem to coincide with taking of panoramic shots, according to the official news coverage of the mission (mentioned earlier). Moreover, the red "Ст." marks on the tape cover might just point to the "Stereoscopic" shots, which are produced by the cameras 2 and 4 (left-right pan). This also explains the "even" remark on the tape cover. Also, the narrator mentions that the recording was done directly from FT console (Photo-Television), likely post-factum (??for lab analysis/enhancement). Wikipedia has a nice photo of the Control indication panel [2], the "ФТ" panel lights are on the right edge. There you could also spot SKU lights ("СИСТЕМА КУРСОУКАЗАНИЯ", Course Guidance System) on the left bottom. Lights for RIFMA were likely on the bottom edge in Scientific Instruments group (covered in the photo by a description plaque). Fun to learn about this. Thank you for the "journey"! It was truly a great achievement not just for people of USSR, but for the whole humankind. Hopefully, given the recent declassifying of some of the Soviet space-programs, it might be possible that there could be already available the images of the very panoramas possibly contained on the tapes (matching by the session dates). Anybody knows of any online archives of images taken by Lunokhod-1? ...Well, answering it by myself: [3] is an excellent selection of historic shots of Moon from Soviet exploration efforts, lots of technical info about cameras and signals. [1]:https://www.kik-sssr.ru/Lunohod-1.htm https://www.kik-sssr.ru/Lunohod-1.htm (in Russian) [2]:https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B4-1 https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%... [3]:http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogMoon.htm http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogMoon.htm
- zoomablemind 5y ago
  > ...it might be possible that there could be already available the images of the very panoramas possibly contained on the tapes (matching by the session dates). Indeed, an exhaustive set of scans of Lunokhod-1 panoramas has been published recently by the Laboratory for Comparative Planetology. Lunar mission Day 5 (Lunation 5) panoramas are at [1]. There were reported total 16 panoramas made during Lunar mission Day 5 (March/9-20/1971, 12 days); last one - during the session 8 (see [2], Lunation 5. Session 8. Panorama 16). Assuming the session/seance number coding is [Lunar-day][session], session-code 508 corresponds to Lunar-day:5, session:8. That is possibly no more reported panoramas in the remaining sessions of the Lunar day. One of the tape in question contains sessions 509, 512, 515. Thus there might be no more reported/published panoramas on that tape. However, the audio fragment given (?session 509), annotates it as "continuation of session 508". Perhaps it may have some additional panorama data for the 8th session panorama. As for the other tape, it's during Lunar mission day 7 (May/7-15/1971, 9days). Total number of panoramas reported for this period is 21; last made during session 8. So, similarly, the other tape (for the session 709) may just have either no more panoramas or some additional data for the panorama taken during session 708. Anyways, hopefully the "buzzing" as heard on the sample will be decoded to reveal something interesting. Good luck! P.S. Btw, the reason the tape sample sounded in reverse may be because it was played on the wrong side. Perhaps it should have been rewound prior to the replaying. Meanwhile, the other tape has a remark on it "Перемотана" (Rewound). [1]:https://www.planetology.ru/panoramas/lunokhod1.php?page=18&language=english https://www.planetology.ru/panoramas/lunokhod1.php?page=18&l... [2]:https://www.planetology.ru/panoramas/lunokhod1.php?page=21&language=english https://www.planetology.ru/panoramas/lunokhod1.php?page=21&l...

148 points by pamoroso 5y ago

> Between 1970 and 1973, the Soviet space program achieved an amazing feat: landing and driving the first remote-controlled roving robots on the Moon. These two vehicles were called Lunokhod-1 and -2, and they gathered invaluable scientific data as well as images of the surface of the Moon during their unprecedented, and still unrivaled, total of 52 kilometers of remotely controlled lunar exploration. Wow. TIL. Wish I had more signal processing know-how to help decode that footage. I'm old enough to remember programs being stored on cassette tapes, but not old enough to have any working experience with that.

bombcar 5y ago
Wow even at moon distances the speed of light starts to play a bit. Remote control at that distance is impressive.
klyrs 5y ago
Incredible. At first I assumed that was a lunar record, but Opportunity was in action for 15 years and 'only' drove 45km
Nikbul 5y ago
What's more impressive that this is 1970, so remote driving capabilities on that kind of distance is mindblowing. I was in NASA KSP tours, man, this tech from 1960 and 1970 looks weird and not functional today.
frederikvs 5y ago
Interesting side note : the people who built the Lunokhod moon rover were later called in to help with the Chernobyl cleanup. They had experience with remote-controlled radiation-hardened rovers. There's an interesting documentary on Curiositystream about the Lunokhod program too.
- sharken 5y ago
  As for results in the cleanup of Chernobyl, they did not fare that well. About 10% of the roof was cleared before radioactivity made it impossible to continue. Though that effort probably saved lives, so mission accomplished I'd say. https://spacecentre.co.uk/blog-post/the-moon-rovers-that-helped-clean-up-chernobyl/ https://spacecentre.co.uk/blog-post/the-moon-rovers-that-hel...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

13of40 5y ago

Just from what I hear on the video, I would say a few things: 1. It sounds like it's around 9600 baud. 2. It sounds sparse. 3. At that bit rate, that amount of data doesn't contain an image. My guess would be that one track is commands being sent or telemetry being received, and the other track is maybe an operator explaining what he's doing or commenting on the decoded telemetry. Edit: I had the Russian guy in the next room translate some of it, and it sounds to me like there's a burst of data, then a comment about things like "device is on", something about lights, etc., so I'm going with the return telemetry one. Maybe they were also getting video, but it's on a different channel.

kodi_ie 5y ago
Actually there is a very long block of data in that sample. If your assumption of 9600 baud is correct it will equivalent to over 300kB of data - enough to send an image or part of it.
- 13of40 5y ago
  What was the start time?

busterarm 5y ago

This sounds exactly like a scenario that openfly gave a Defcon talk on a few years ago -- about old NASA data storage technology that is on the verge of becoming unreadable and how we have to think about the formats that we currently use and preservation into the future.

enriquto 5y ago
Do you have a reference for that talk? (or about the "lost" nasa data). I have a kink for bizarre file formats and this got me excited...
- busterarm 5y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctwUkz_0gbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctwUkz_0gbg
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
For the last few decades, the best practice for data archiving has been to include a machine capable of reading the data inside the box with the data itself. E.g. Inside your big crate of tapes, you include a tape reader, with printed instructions and schematics for how to read the data.

bagels 5y ago

> The owner has not disclosed the full list of contents of the tapes to me so far. Why not? Why would someone want to help without an explanation for that? Seems pretty suspect.

paoloatti 5y ago
The owner is very protective of these tapes and for personal reasons has found it very difficult to trust reporters. Personally, I cannot guarantee the authenticity of these tapes, although everything I have seen so far seems to confirm it. Ascertaining the status of these tapes is the first step. Let's see where it takes us.

Nikbul 5y ago

Why is it Lunokhod? It should be Lunohod (MoonWalker). Russian writing Луноход. I hope author of the blog answers my email.

userbinator 5y ago
Because х is romanised as kh.
- hulitu 5y ago
  Maybe in english.
  - kingofpandora 5y ago
    It's an English-language website so why wouldn't they use English transliteration?
aix1 5y ago
There are many systems for romanising Russian. Most of them use kh for х (including those used by US/UK for Russian place names, names in Russian passports, road signs in Russia). Wikipedia has a handy table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Russian#Transliteration_table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Russian#Transl... As to why it is that way, I don't know. Some closely related languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian) follow different conventions. For example, the national system in Belarus transliterates х as ch and г as h.
paoloatti 5y ago
Hello, I'm Paolo Attivissimo, the poster of the original article. I am using the "Lunokhod" spelling because this is the spelling used by NASA and many other reference sources, including Anatoly Zak's RussianSpaceWeb http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_planetary_lunar.html http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_planetary_lunar.ht...
js8 5y ago
Because 'h' and 'kh' usually denote different sounds, the latter encodes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative.

foobar1962 5y ago

Consider contacting some technical experts at sound and film archives, they often keep one or two machines in running order and have knowledge in identifying material. Source: worked for Australia’s ABC Archives doing the back-end for analog tape digitisation project. Step 1 was “get working machines.”

CamperBob2 5y ago

Sounds like a job for Mike Stewart [1], or rather a quick hack over his lunch break, based on his work on the AGC. [1]: https://blog.samtec.com/post/restoring-agc-part1/ https://blog.samtec.com/post/restoring-agc-part1/

tclover 5y ago

is this legal?

paoloatti 5y ago
That is a good question. The legal status of these data is unclear. That is one of the reasons for publishing only a sample of the data. Personally, as a matter of opinion, I presume that these data can be published legally, based on other similar cases. But if the owner or myself are contacted by lawyers, I'll update the article.
bserge 5y ago
It's not legal in the USSR. But I don't think they have the resources to go after you these days.
- tclover 5y ago
  If you think this is funny, your kind of humor is perfect for reddit
  - bserge 5y ago
    Didn't think anyone knew about that place, that's where I built my experience!

snowycat 5y ago

Asked a Russian friend of mine. The image of the page with lots of Russian text on it is about how to store magnetic tape.

femto 5y ago

You should be aiming to play the tapes once only. If you have something that can physically play the tapes without damaging them, make the highest fidelity PCM (digital) recording possible of the analogue signal, without any regard to further decoding. The tapes should then be placed in a safe place and never played again (unless you later find something wrong with your PCM capture of the analogue signal). Make a backup of your digital/PCM recording and put it in a safe place. All further decoding work is then done using a copy of your high-fidelity PCM/digital recording of the analogue signal.

ganzuul 5y ago
Perhaps reference what preservation standard this follows?
- orf 5y ago
  Common sense?

jmpman 5y ago

The IBM tape lab in Tucson was used to recover the Space Shuttle Challenger tapes. They may be able to recover this data as well.

zoomablemind 5y ago

> ...“Transmission 109 of 13 May 1971. It has two parts, first part with TM, second part without TM. Length: 40' [probably minutes]”. Looking at the handwriting for reel 1, it appears that the transmission session number is rather 709, not 109. Note, that the handwriting for the second reel shows the session 509 in March of the same year. The "first" reel dates the session in May. P.S. Hard to judge about origins of the tapes, but by the looks, the reels seem more like some personal use dubs, not much an "official" storage. No reg numbers, names, very non-official. Additionally, the edge remarks on the second reel mention that some parts were dubbed on "someone-else's" recorder. This is likely noted in case the head alignment needs adjustment for better read.

daniel_reetz 5y ago
In Russian handwriting, the "1" has a hooked top and the "7" has a strike through the middle. This is most likely a "1". You can see a "7" in "1971". Looks like a "1" to me but I'm not a native speaker.
Nikbul 5y ago
If you look closely, 1 in 1971 is a lot closer than 7 that written in 109. Also as mentioned below, defining stroke in the middle with 7, and how it is written. For number 1, writing starts with upper left and goes down, that makes sense for translation from 1 to 0. For 7 you do same but middle stroke takes your hand off paper so there is no direct and smooth translation to next number. That's my reasoning for interpreting it as 109, rather than 709.
zoomablemind 5y ago
> ...Looking at the handwriting for reel 1, it appears that the transmission session number is rather 709, not 109. Perhaps, I'm mistaken, however in support of this reading speaks also the mission's Lunar day numbering [1] This places the March session recordings, as marked on the reel (509,...) on the 5th Lunar mission day, then May session recordings could correspond to the 7th Lunar mission day (thus 709). Again, just a hunch. Maybe the narrator announces the number clearly on that May tape. [1]:https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B4-1 https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%... Lunar-mission-day, Date-range-1971 1st, Nov/17-24/1970 2nd, Dec/8-23/1970 3rd, Jan/7-21 4th, Feb/7-20 5th, Mar/7-20 6th, Apr/6-20 7th, May/6-20 8th, Jun/4-11 9th, Jul/3-17 10th, Aug/2-16 11th, Aug/31-Sep/15 P.S. Also an interesting read is the mission PR in the state newspapers [2]. Gives an outlook at what notable was achieved on which date. So this might provide some hints about possible kind of "graphic" content on the tapes...if any, of course. [2]: http://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/bibl/osvoen-kosm-pr-sssr/1971/05.html http://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/bibl/osvoen-kosm-pr-sssr/1971...

ibaikov 5y ago

Hi. Native Russian here. Just took a quick glance, it's a very common type of tape, called svema (свема). Should be totally possible to make a digital copy. I can contact museums etc if needed. I also have folks who upscale old videos on YouTube with neutral nets, starting with first Lumiere videos to old SF tapes

The_rationalist 5y ago

An interesting project would be to reconstruct the audio from the USSR rockets that went to venus

pamoroso 5y ago

Thanks all for the suggestions and feedback. Paolo Attivissimo, the author of the linked post, is monitoring this thread.

femto 5y ago

I just extracted the audio from the sample mp4. Each data record seems to be a lead-in tone with a frequency of 3.6kHz, followed by something (data?) followed by a lead-out tone with a frequency of 3.6kHz. The spectrum of the "something" is broadened, suggesting a modulated signal, though it does have a strong peak at approximately 5943Hz.

zoomablemind 5y ago

A lot of interesting details (and photos) about the onboard TV-photo system of the Lunokhod-1 could be found on [1]. Btw, it looks like the tapes indeed may contain the photos - the session dates seem to coincide with taking of panoramic shots, according to the official news coverage of the mission (mentioned earlier). Moreover, the red "Ст." marks on the tape cover might just point to the "Stereoscopic" shots, which are produced by the cameras 2 and 4 (left-right pan). This also explains the "even" remark on the tape cover. Also, the narrator mentions that the recording was done directly from FT console (Photo-Television), likely post-factum (??for lab analysis/enhancement). Wikipedia has a nice photo of the Control indication panel [2], the "ФТ" panel lights are on the right edge. There you could also spot SKU lights ("СИСТЕМА КУРСОУКАЗАНИЯ", Course Guidance System) on the left bottom. Lights for RIFMA were likely on the bottom edge in Scientific Instruments group (covered in the photo by a description plaque). Fun to learn about this. Thank you for the "journey"! It was truly a great achievement not just for people of USSR, but for the whole humankind. Hopefully, given the recent declassifying of some of the Soviet space-programs, it might be possible that there could be already available the images of the very panoramas possibly contained on the tapes (matching by the session dates). Anybody knows of any online archives of images taken by Lunokhod-1? ...Well, answering it by myself: [3] is an excellent selection of historic shots of Moon from Soviet exploration efforts, lots of technical info about cameras and signals. [1]:https://www.kik-sssr.ru/Lunohod-1.htm https://www.kik-sssr.ru/Lunohod-1.htm (in Russian) [2]:https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B4-1 https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%... [3]:http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogMoon.htm http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogMoon.htm

zoomablemind 5y ago
> ...it might be possible that there could be already available the images of the very panoramas possibly contained on the tapes (matching by the session dates). Indeed, an exhaustive set of scans of Lunokhod-1 panoramas has been published recently by the Laboratory for Comparative Planetology. Lunar mission Day 5 (Lunation 5) panoramas are at [1]. There were reported total 16 panoramas made during Lunar mission Day 5 (March/9-20/1971, 12 days); last one - during the session 8 (see [2], Lunation 5. Session 8. Panorama 16). Assuming the session/seance number coding is [Lunar-day][session], session-code 508 corresponds to Lunar-day:5, session:8. That is possibly no more reported panoramas in the remaining sessions of the Lunar day. One of the tape in question contains sessions 509, 512, 515. Thus there might be no more reported/published panoramas on that tape. However, the audio fragment given (?session 509), annotates it as "continuation of session 508". Perhaps it may have some additional panorama data for the 8th session panorama. As for the other tape, it's during Lunar mission day 7 (May/7-15/1971, 9days). Total number of panoramas reported for this period is 21; last made during session 8. So, similarly, the other tape (for the session 709) may just have either no more panoramas or some additional data for the panorama taken during session 708. Anyways, hopefully the "buzzing" as heard on the sample will be decoded to reveal something interesting. Good luck! P.S. Btw, the reason the tape sample sounded in reverse may be because it was played on the wrong side. Perhaps it should have been rewound prior to the replaying. Meanwhile, the other tape has a remark on it "Перемотана" (Rewound). [1]:https://www.planetology.ru/panoramas/lunokhod1.php?page=18&language=english https://www.planetology.ru/panoramas/lunokhod1.php?page=18&l... [2]:https://www.planetology.ru/panoramas/lunokhod1.php?page=21&language=english https://www.planetology.ru/panoramas/lunokhod1.php?page=21&l...