**THE LUNAR DATA PROJECT - RESTORATION OF APOLLO DATA FOR FUTURE LUNAR
EXPLORATION.** David R. Williams^1^ and Edwin J. Grayzeck, Jr.^2^,
^1^QSS Group, Inc., NSSDC, Code 690.1, Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, MD, 20771, dave.williams@gsfc.nasa.gov, ^2^NSSDC, Code 690.1,
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, 20771,
grayzeck@mail630.gsfc.nasa.gov

At the close of the 1960\'s and beginning of the 1970\'s, NASA\'s Apollo
project landed six astronaut missions on the Moon. Five of these
(Apollos 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17) set up long-lived instrument suites,
the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Packages, or ALSEPs, on the lunar
surface. These packages operated autonomously and transmitted data back
to Earth until 1977. The data, meant primarily for evaluation of the
engineering aspects of lunar bases, represent the only long-term
information on the lunar surface environment, and as such are ideal for
planning future lunar missions.

Unfortunately, much of these data are stored in cumbersome forms which
make them inaccessible to most users. The data were examined in the
1970\'s but have not been widely used since that time. Much of the data
would be amenable to methods of analysis and advances in hardware that
have been developed in the intervening years. If the data were more
readily available and usable in today\'s environment, they could provide
a wealth of information for scientific studies and planning for future
lunar exploration.

The Lunar Data Project (LDP) is an effort to take relevant,
scientifically important ALSEP and other Apollo data archived at the
National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC), which holds the most
complete collection of these data, and put it into a digital form which
can be used by researchers and mission planners. Data in analog form, on
microfilm, microfiche, photographic film, or hard copy documents, are
being digitized. Digital data in older, rarely used formats are being
recast into more general formats (typically ASCII tables). All these
data will then be put online in a Lunar Exploration Enabling Database
(LEED) in CDF (Common Data Format). LEED will provide multiple pathways
and search capabilities for the data, as well as display tools. The data
will also be submitted to the Planetary Data System (PDS) for validation
and archiving. This effort is currently being funded by an internal
Goddard Space Flight Center grant.

The data were selected for their relevance to science and exploration by
a group of scientists and engineers at Goddard Space Flight Center. This
Lunar Data Evaluation Team studied and discussed the data available at
NSSDC and determined which were most suitable for restoration based on
their relevance to future lunar exploration, scientific value of the
data, and difficulty of restoration. The selected data being resurrected
by the LDP include data from the ALSEP experiments: the Suprathermal Ion
Detector Experiment, the Cold Cathode Ion Gauge, the Charged Particle
Lunar Environment Experiment, the Solar Wind Spectrometer, the Soil
Mechanics Experiment, and the Dust, Thermal, and Radiation Engineering
Measurements Package. There are also data from orbital experiments: the
Lunar Particle Shadows and Boundary Layer Experiment, the Alpha Particle
Spectrometer, and the Far-Ultraviolet Spectrometer. The staff of the LDP
are largely NSSDC personnel, and so have familiarity with the data and
experience working with older media and formats.

Metadata, ancillary information to aid in the use and understanding of
the data, will also be produced and incorporated in the database. This
will include complete descriptions of the data sets, formats, processing
history, and relevant references and contacts, as well as descriptions
of the instruments used to collect the data, mission history, and any
other information deemed necessary to make full use of the data. At the
end of this multi-year effort we will have the LEED fully populated with
relevant data and associated metadata which will be easily accessible to
interested users from the lunar scientific and exploration communities.
This poster will discuss the digitization of one dataset (CCIG) and
outline progress on the overall project.