Vintage NASA tapes found gathering dust in a lab


A box of NASA audio tapes, gathering dust in a lab for decades, has been found and digitised by NASA historians.

Among them is a radio transmission from 12 August 1960 of then-President Eisenhower between the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and Bell Laboratories on the east coast via the “echo balloon” – a mammoth silver balloon intended to be a communications satellite.

There’s also a conversation between the Mariner mission program manager Jack James and astronaut John Glenn from 29 January 1963, also via satellite (albeit not a balloon).

Download the digitised files here.

Please login to favourite this article.