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

==== Apollo 16 – Lunar Highlands Mission ====

Mission Data: Apollo 16 (April 1972) continued the J-mission program, landing in the lunar highlands (Descartes region). It too carried a Lunar Rover with a color TV camera, plus a similar SIM bay of orbital instruments. Apollo 16’s mission had a notable incident: an in-flight problem with the Command Module’s main engine that almost cut the lunar orbit stay short (they resolved it and proceeded with the landing after a one-day delay). Telemetry was critical in diagnosing that issue, and all of that data was recorded on the ground. After the mission, Apollo 16’s telemetry tapes were sent to storage like previous missions. Given the timing (1972), they would have been part of the later batches of Apollo tapes that were archived at WNRC. By 1983, NASA had pulled tens of thousands of magnetic tape reels from WNRC for reusenasa.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> – Apollo 16’s reels almost certainly among them. In line with NASA’s findings, no Apollo 16 raw telemetry tapes are currently known to be in 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=searchers%20never%20found%20what%20they,Apollo%2011%20moon%20landing%20and|publisher=nasa.gov|access-date=2025-12-06}}</ref>.

Scientific Telemetry: Apollo 16’s ALSEP included a unique experiment: the Active Seismic Experiment (shooting small mortar shells to create seismic waves), in addition to a heat flow experiment, lunar surface magnetometer, and others. It also had a far UV camera/spectrograph operated on the surface (its data were recorded on film by the astronauts, not telemetry). The ALSEP instruments sent data to Earth until 1977, similar to Apollo 15’s. These data went through the same archiving troubles. A large fraction of Apollo 16’s raw ALSEP tapes were lost. However, some were recovered: for example, the batch of 1975 ARCSAV tapes recovered in 2010 would include Apollo 16 data for that periodpoikiloblastic.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>. By 1975, Apollo 16 had been operating ~3 years, so those tapes cover later portions of the record. The restoration team has processed Apollo 16’s ALSEP data as well – notably, Apollo 16’s Passive Seismic Experiment data (and all seismic data from all missions) have been cleaned up and put in standardized formatspds-geosciences.wustl.edu<ref>{{cite web|title=pds-geosciences.wustl.edu|url=https://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/apollo/index.htm#:~:text=missions%2C%20spacecraft%20and%20experiments|publisher=pds-geosciences.wustl.edu|access-date=2025-12-06}}</ref>. Apollo 16’s heat flow data unfortunately had issues (one probe failed during deployment), but the available data have been archived. Essentially, Apollo 16’s experiment data have been saved in PDS archives, often by compiling multiple sources (PI logs, recovered tapes, etc.). Meanwhile, Apollo 16 also deployed a subsatellite in lunar orbit like Apollo 15 did. That subsatellite experienced an unstable orbit and crashed after only 35 days, but during that time it transmitted data on magnetic fields and charged particles. Those data were likely captured on telemetry tapes at ground stations and then forwarded to investigators. The subsatellite data would have been archived in principal investigator files and maybe at NSSDC (for example, Apollo 16 subsatellite magnetometer data appears in publications). The raw subsatellite tape would have been treated as temporary and likely overwritten later.

Current Status: Mission tapes: As with Apollo 15, none of Apollo 16’s mission operation tapes are available. The needed information from them (engine performance, trajectories, etc.) was extracted and appears in the Apollo 16 Mission Report and technical memos. The lack of original tapes means that if someone wanted to re-crunch Apollo 16’s telemetry with modern tools, they largely cannot – except for what was printed or later digitized by alternate means. Audio/video: Apollo 16’s voice recordings were kept on analog tapes like all Apollo missions; those tapes survived in storage. NASA is in the process of digitizing them. Apollo 16’s full mission control audio is expected to be released (as of 2023, portions of Apollo 16’s audio were being processed by the UT Dallas team). The televised EVA footage from Apollo 16 is fully preserved in the archives – recordings of the live TV (the famous Apollo 16 Grand Prix rover drive, etc.) are intact and have been transferred to digital media over the years. So, anyone can watch Apollo 16’s surface activities, albeit at the 1972 broadcast quality. The onboard 16mm films (like the LM liftoff as filmed by the rover camera, or interior footage) are also archived and many have been scanned in HD for public viewing.

Science tapes: Apollo 16’s ALSEP data is largely accessible now via PDS. For example, Apollo 16’s magnetometer and seismic data appear in consolidated Apollo seismic archivespds-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>. The condition of any Apollo 16-specific tapes that were found (if any) is not explicitly documented, but presumably similar to Apollo 15’s – if they were in the recovered batch, they were read successfully. Many Apollo 16 ALSEP tapes (especially those from 1972–74) were likely never recovered, but NASA could rely on the fact that principal investigators had kept some of their own “PI tapes” or printouts for that periodpoikiloblastic.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%20processing%20and%20maintenance,as%20selected%20by%20PI%20teams|publisher=poikiloblastic.wordpress.com|date=2013-02-22|access-date=2025-12-06}}</ref>. In one notable case, Apollo 16’s Active Seismic Experiment data (from the mortar shots) were initially missing because the raw data wasn’t archived; but researchers in recent years managed to locate the summary records and have reconstructed a catalog of those seismic events. So even where tapes were missing, knowledge was not completely lost.

In summary, Apollo 16’s telemetry tapes are considered lost like the others, with no reels known to be sitting in any archive or collection. The mission’s outcome data (science and engineering) have been preserved through reconstruction and modern archiving projects. There haven’t been media stories of Apollo 16 tapes turning up in random places, which suggests they were indeed all disposed of. The focus for Apollo 16 has been on making sure the scientific legacy is captured (which it now is, digitally) and on releasing the audio/visual materials, rather than recovering original tapes which are presumed gone.