A rummage in the Apollo archive

One of the delights of working for the BBC is that you get to dip occasionally into its vast archive.

"Auntie" is gradually opening up this treasure trove as part of an effort to make historic recordings - video and audio - generally available to the people who paid for its acquisition: you, me and other licence fee holders.

It's an incredible resource.

The reason I raise this now is that I've been having a rummage for Apollo 13 archive. The 40th anniversary of the accident is on 14 April (GMT).

The BBC's aerospace correspondent at the time, Reg Turnill, is giving a talk at the forthcoming UK Space Conference and was interested to know what - if anything - his old employer had retained of his reports.

Reg played a huge part in breaking this story to the world. The explosion which ripped a hole in the side of the Service Module happened late at night just as Reg was about to head for his motel in Houston.

Most of the other journalists had already gone and so the BBC's man was one of the few reporters to hear those infamous words come through to Mission Control:

"Houston, we've had a problem."

Within the hour, Reg was telling the world what had happened.

I've attached to this page one of "our correspondent's" reports that was filed as Nasa grappled with a plan to get the crew home safely.

You'll hear Reg describe the now famous "Mailbox" contraption that the crew rigged up inside their spacecraft to scrub the air of carbon dioxide. (Even if all you know of Apollo 13 is the Tom Hanks movie, you'll know what I'm talking about).

And here's the thing I love about listening to old reports: you hear things you'd forgotten or never knew about.

Right at the end, Reg mentions a seismic experiment at the Moon - the one big success of the Apollo 13 mission (that is, if you don't count as a success the extraordinary feat of getting the crew back to Earth alive).

It had been decided that instead of sending the third-stage of the Saturn V rocket into solar orbit, as was the practice on previous missions, the trajectory of 13's third-stage would be targeted to impact the lunar surface.

It was a "moonquake" experiment - the seismic signals from the impact were to be recorded by equipment left on the lunar surface by Apollo 12.

Well, of course, the third-stage was sent on its collision trajectory before the drama of the Service Module explosion unfolded, and few will have heard of the experiment's existence or even cared about its outcome. But Reg's report picks up the result:

"The 15-tonne third-stage rocket crashed into the Moon and its impact created seismometer readings which continued for the extraordinary time of four hours."

Modern audiences will no doubt think immediately of last year's LCROSS experiment to find water at the Moon's southern pole. LCROSS involved slamming a Centaur stage from an Atlas rocket into Cabeus crater.

As a way to investigate a planetary body, it's a useful technique.

If you are in Godalming on Saturday 27 March, you'll be able to hear directly from Reg Turnill as he gives a lecture about Apollo 13 at the UK Space Conference.

You can still watch and listen to other BBC Apollo material at its dedicated archive pages.

It's made me think about some of the other archive material I should be pulling out to feature in this blog. It would be interesting to see what we've still got from BBC reporters who witnessed the first shuttle mission, to run later this year when the orbiter makes its final flight.

Watch this space.

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