Moon dust data collected in the late 60’s and early 70’s by apollo missions’ dust collectors, was filed away due to a lack of interest from the scientific community. 2 copies of the moon data were made. NASA kept one and Sydney University kept the other. Nasa lost theirs. Sydney’s had theirs but had to beg & borrow the IBM 729 Mark V tape drive needed to read the data. The drive came from a museum and is not currently functioning but it is thought to be a month or two away from being so.

I thought it was kind fo funny that “‘dust collector’” was used in the same article as “ancient IBM tape drive” but they somehow weren’t synonyms.

Read the whole story here.