Apollo Archive Explorer Version 5.2, January 8, 2017 Douglas W. Oard, University of Maryland Latest version: http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~oard/apollo/aex/ This mission reconstruction tool was developed as a prototype to explore time-synchronized replay of of multimedia Apollo mission records from from the NASA archives. The system is presently designed to handle the following types of materials for five lunar landing missions (Apollo 11, 14, 15, 16, and 17): o Multiple channels of audio (presently Space-to-Ground radio, sometimes with the flight director loop integrated; on Apollo 11 only, Onboard and PAO audio is now fully integrated, along with 6 other channels present during the first 14 minutes of the mission) o One channel of video (presently EVA TV or launch footage) o Two sequences of still photography (presently CDR and LMP) o Several scanned transcripts (presently DSE, DSEA, and GOSS 1 TEC) o Two scanned flight plans (CM and LM) for Apollo 15 only o Several sources of postflight analysis (presently the Apollo Flight Journal, the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, and a traverse map) o Post-flight interviews from the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. The second lunar landing mission (Apollo 12) is not yet incorporated. System requirements: This is research software, designed more for flexibility than for efficiency or easy maintainability. The resource requirements are: o Disk: about 25 GB of free space o Screen resolution: 1024x600 or better o Operating system: Tested on Windows 7 and 10. o An Internet connection (required only for the Apollo Flight Journal and the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal). Known limitations: This version of the Apollo Archive Explorer has the following known limitations that may be fixed in subsequent releases: Data limitations: o Video and space-to-ground audio are available mostly during lunar surface EVA television periods. At most other times, the system is silent. Apollo 11 and Apollo 14 are exceptions, with more audio available for those missions. o Only lunar surface photography is included o The Apollo Flight Journal and the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal load over the Internet to comply with copyright restrictions. This works fine on fast and reliable Internet connections, but it can cause problems on slow or unreliable connections. o The hypertext links in the Apollo Flight Journal and the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal are displayed, but they can not be clicked on. o Multi-channel audio currently only exists for the launch phase of Apollo 11. Design limitations: o The time synchronization of the TEC transcript is designed to show only GOSS-1. When the LM is on the surface, communication between Houston and the CM generally occurs on GOSS-2, which appears on different pages from GOSS-1 in the TEC transcript that are not shown by this version of the system. (For Apollo 11, 15, and 16 this data is available in the Apollo Flight Journal.) o The system will not work on the 800x600 display of older laptops and projectors because a minimum 1024-pixel display width is required. o A 32-bit version of Java is needed by the Java Media Framework (JMF). A 32-bit version of Java can be installed and will work fine on 64-bit systems. o The video does not work on Unix or Mac installations of JMF (this is a JMF limitation). Bugs: o For the Apollo 11 multi-channel audio to work correctly, the system must be started with Apollo 11 selected. This is now the default. o Selecting an earlier Ground Elapsed Time in the same Apollo Lunar Surface Journal file (e.g., by clicking in the timeline) will sometimes not automatically recenter the scrollbar. A simple workaround is to manually move the scrollbar to the top of the file; it will then snap down to the right place. o In some missions, the transcript highlighting is not well synchronized with the audio and video. Synchronization is a manual process, and this simply hasn't been done yet in some cases. o Highlighting in some scanned transcript pages is offset a bit. This results from undetected changes to the resolution of the scanned page images. o The video may start a few seconds before the rest of the program is ready to go on slower systems. In general, the operation of the system is fairly straightforward, but controlling the Ground Elapsed Time requires a few tricks to manage an 11 day mission without using a lot of screen space. For Apollo 15, 16 and 17, the replay starts early in EVA 2 at a point that is suitable for demonstrations (i.e., with video and photos). For Apollo 14, the replay starts early in EVA 1. For Apollo 11, the replay starts at launch. Here's how to adjust the Ground Elapsed Time: o Drag the vertical timeline slider to the desired time (1 hour increments) or click inside the slider to move it up or down by one hour. o Click in the expanded timeline panel right of the timeline slider to get to a more precise time. The events shown in the timeline panel are shown at their actual time (not at the preflight plan). o For Apollo 15, The flight plan shows the planned events in much greater detail. To get to a flight plan event, click on the vertical timeline in a CM or LM flight plan to move to any time displayed on that page. The flight plans normally contain one hour per page (sometimes in a two-column format). Note that the times in the flight plan reflect pre-flight planning, so this may not be a very precise way of finding a specific event in the actual mission. In addition, the mission and initial time can be changed from the command line. A single parameter sets the mission to 11, 14, 15, 16, or 17. A second parameter sets the initial time, as displayed in the timeline when the program is running. The format is 3 digits for the hour, a colon (:), 2 digits for the minute, a colon, and 2 digits for the second. This is described further under "Running the program on Windows" further down. Installation: You don't need to be a Java programmer to install the Apollo archive explorer, but you do need to use the command-line interface. 1) Install a 32 bit version of the Java Development Kit (version 7u5 or later) and the Java Media Framework (JMF). JMF requires a separate installation after you have installed JDK. JDK is available from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html and JMF is available from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tech/index-jsp-140239.html You will also want to set your Path system variable to include the bin subdirectory of the directory where Java is installed since subsequent steps require command-line access to programs found there. On Windows 7 this is done in Control Panel-Systems- Advanced System Settings-Environment Variables and on Windows 10 it is done in Settings->System->About->System Info->Advanced System Settings->Environment Variables. You may also need to add the file jfxrt.jar to you CLASSPATH environment variable. This file should be in the lib subdirectory of the directory where Java is installed. 2) Install Apache Lucene version 3.6.1 or 3.6.2 (later versions will not work). Lucene is available from http://lucene.apache.org. To install it, unzip the release anywhere you want (it creates a directory for its files), and then edit the CLASSPATH environment variable to include the full path name for the Lucene JAR file (which is called c:\java\lucene-3.6.2\lucene-core-3.6.2.jar on my system because I installed it in c:\java). On Windows 7 and 10, this is done in the same window that the path is set (described above). 3) Obtain the file aex.5.2.zip from http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~oard/apollo/ and use WinZip unpack it where you want to install it. The recommended location is at the top level of your c:\ drive. This will create an "apollo" directory and a "data" subdirectory, and will unpack the source and class files for the program and this README file. 4) Obtain the files a11data.zip, a14data.zip, a15data.zip, a16data.zip, and a17data.zip from the same source and unpack them in the data subdirectory (NOT anywhere else). You can use WinZip for the zip files (be sure to specify the correct directory; by default WinZip will add the file name to the path. This will set up all of the needed data files except the video (for which an empty directory is provided). Running the program on Windows: 1) Launch a command window. In Windows 7, select the start menu and then enter "cmd" in the "Start Search" box. In Windows 10, just enter "cmd" n the search box. 2) cd to the "apollo" directory and issue the command "java -Xmx512m Replay" (proper capitalization is important here). The program should start, displaying status information in the command window. Once all data has been read in (which may require a minute or so), a window will appear. The window can be resized to make it larger or smaller, but making it narrower than is necessary to show at least some portion of the video window will have undesirable effects. 3) You can terminate execution using the using the close widget in the upper right corner of the window or with a control-C in the command window. Or you can let it run for the length of the full mission if you want to see how it ends ... 4) Optionally, you can add parameters to change the initial position of the system. By adding a single parameter, you can change the starting mission. To do this, issue the command "java -Xmx512m Replay 15" or whichever mission you prefer (11, 14, 15, 16, or 17). The default mission is 11. By adding a second parameter, you can change the start time of the mission. To do this, issue the command "java -Xmx512m Replay 16 113:50:52" or whatever time you prefer. The time must be listed in the format HHH:MM:SS, with 3 digits for the hour, 2 for the minute, and 2 for the second. The time matches that shown in the timeline when the program is running. Change Log: Version 5.2 (1/8/2017): Substantial cleanup to get to a reasonably clean and robust release. Version 5.1 (6/22/2016): Multi-channel audio now allows changing tracks through a drop-down menu. More channels have been added to the system. Version 5.0 (10/22/2014): Major revision to restructure the timeline to run vertically. Initial multi-channel audio implementation. Version 4.0 (7/22/2013): Public release. Major revision to add Apollo 11 and extra capabilities, along with a cleanup of the system. Version 3.3 (8/6/2012): Minor updates for current versions of Lucene and Java, a few bug fixes, adding the full Apollo 16 Flight Journal, and including Apollo 14 and 17 data. Version 3.2 (10/26/2007): Minor bug fixes. Version 3.1 (10/6/2007): Added Apollo 16 Version 3.0 (6/1/2005) Major revision to integrate additional missions and to add search capabilities. Redistribution: The Apollo Archive Explorer software is distributed under the GNU Public License, which essentially means that you can use it for any noncommercial purpose that you want, but that you cannot use it in a commercial product without my permission. Copyright is not claimed on the data that is provided by the U.S. Government. Bug reports: Please send bug reports to Doug Oard (oard@umd.edu). This program is not under continuous development, but if I do make changes, I'll make an effort to either clean up known bugs or at least make note of them in this README file. Acknowledgments: Thanks to Glenn Swanson at the NASA Johnson Space Center for making the scanned transcripts available and to Eric Jones, David Woods and Frank O'Brien for creating the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal and the Apollo Flight Journal. This project would not have been possible without their trailblazing efforts! Thanks also to Huanfeng Ma and David Doermann at the University of Maryland, who performed the OCR and zone detection on which the handling of the scanned transcripts depends. Kudos to Joseph Malionek for implementing the topic linking to post-flight interviews, to Bryan Toth for implementing multi-channel audio, and to Tiffany Jachja for conducting a study of how people use the system. Thanks also to John Hansen, Abhijeet Sangwan, Lakshmish Kaushik, Chengzhu Yu and the entire team at the University of Texas at Dallas for digitizing the Mission Control Center audio. The development of the Apollo Archive Explorer has been supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant 1218159.