Houston, we have a podcast.

Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center.

Episode 89, The Heroes Behind the Heroes,

Part 2.

I'm Pat Ryan, and I'm pleased you've joined us to pick up on the story of the rescue of an artifact of American history,

the audio recordings of NASA's Mission Control Center during Apollo 11, the first landing of men on the moon. In part one we introduced the

story of a professor from the University of Texas at Dallas who studies speech

processing and language technology and wants to move the field beyond a smartphone

being able to understand simple questions. In 2012 he wanted to study language as

used by a large group of people interacting with one another on a common project

or during an emergency.

And he found out that NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston had recordings of the conversations

of the Mission Control Team

during the Apollo missions.

That would be perfect for his research,

and he got a grant from the National Science Foundation

to fund the work.

But when he got to Houston, he discovered some seemingly impenetrable

obstacles to his plan. And that's where we start part two of the heroes behind the

heroes. Here we go. P minus five seconds I get to county.

March. This is start.

B-0. Longs-commit lights are correct.

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