Rescue of data from Pioneer 10 & 11 tapes at JPL needed.

On Sat, 4 Jun 2005 16:01:32 -0400 "Bill Dawson" <whdawson at localisps.net> wrote: [...] The U of Arizona had the imaging experiments on the two spacecraft and a friend worked on the data reduction team. I got the following then converted it to digital and transmitted it to JPL which then retransmitted it to Ames (and possibly Goddard) which had spacecraft responsibility. He believed the analog data was kept for some time at the tracking stations (he had some data retransmitted occasionally up to 3 months after reception), but does not know how long. Ames had a program called SOLDPS (sp?) that received the data, recorded it, and divided it up between experimental teams utilizing an IBM 360/90 pair. The UofA got 7-track tapes in fixed block, ASCII, stranger tapes that were taken apart on the local CDC (which only had 7-track tapes). He believed other teams received both 7-track and 9- track tapes written in IBM EBSIDC standard form as require by the local computer systems. The point he made is that each experimenter knew what their data meant and had their own analysis programs - a virtual tower of Babel... He believed that the Pioneers were unique at that time in that they used the received carrier to generate the transmitted carrier. This created an interferometer which, if he remembers correctly, placed the distance to the spacecraft to a meter or so. Tucked away in one of his storage modules he has the Space Craft Bible for those beasts and he promises to pull it out one of these days - should be interesting reading. CRC