Space.com has just posted the latest on the search for those missing slow-scan television (SSTV) recordings of Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon. (I’ve blogged about this search previously here, here, and here.) To cut to the chase, they haven’t found them yet.

The inquiry into the whereabouts of the SSTV tapes has not proven easy.

 

Budget cuts at NASA in the post-Apollo years meant that many day-to-day records were discarded. Jobs and entire divisions that dealt with data records were eliminated.

 

Since there was no official requirement to archive data like this, [Bill] Wood added, the SSTV tape could have gone the same way that many old television programs did: TV stations degaussed the tapes and reused them.

That’s a perfectly horrifying thought…