Listen to Apollo 11 Conversations the Earth Didn't Hear

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[/caption] The whole world watched as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the surface of the Moon. Everyone listened intently to every word said between the Eagle lander and mission control. But what did Neil and Buzz say to each other when the microphone was off? Now you can find out. NASA has made the onboard audio tapes available online, so everyone can listen in the what happened inside the spacecraft. These are not necessarily major milestones of the mission but are some of the more interesting and clearly recorded conversations the crew members had among themselves as the mission progressed.

For example, here's one exchange between Armstrong and Aldrin:

"I would appreciate if you could ... see if you could ... find the map ..."

"Trade you that for a piece of gum. There it is."

Find the Apollo 11 audio highlights here.

And here's the Apollo 11 onboard voice transcription.

All of the Apollo spacecraft included onboard voice recorders, activated during much of each mission to record the crew's conversations. The transcripts of those recordings were publicly released in the mid-1970s and they have been posted on the Internet for years. But only recently were the actual onboard recordings from Apollo 11 digitized so that the recordings could be made available on the Internet.

The Apollo 11 Onboard Audio Tape Database cross references the tape numbers to the Mission Elapsed Time (MET) that was on each tape. The database includes a description of the mission status at that time. It is best to listen to the tapes while simultaneously viewing the same mission elapsed time on the transcript, since often the recordings are faint.

Source:

NASA

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com