With more than 300 hours of audio, 22 hours of video, and 4,000 photos, a Toronto man鈥檚 hobby website dedicated to recreating the last mission to the moon in real time has landed him a dream job at NASA.
While other people come home from work to relax, Ben Feist would leave his job at an advertising agency at the end of the day to sift through hours of audio recordings, videos, and transcripts from the Apollo 17 mission to the moon in 1972.
Unlike other missions, the information from Apollo 17 was disorganized and neglected when Feist stumbled upon it roughly eight years ago.
"The historical record of Apollo 17鈥� wasn鈥檛 very well documented because they weren鈥檛 going back anytime soon so when they were doing the packaging up of the mission at the end of it, they didn鈥檛 put the same amount of effort in that as they did for the previous missions,鈥� he explained to CTV鈥檚 Your Morning on Wednesday.
In an effort to 鈥渃omplete part of history,鈥� Feist set about matching the various audio recordings, video clips, and transcripts to create a minute-by-minute recreation of the 12-day mission.
Six years later, Feist鈥檚 labour of love was complete and was launched.
It wasn鈥檛 long before Feist received an unexpected call from someone at NASA who complimented the website and invited him to give a talk about his work at the Goddard Space Flight Center, located just north of Washington, D.C.
鈥淚t was pretty amazing,鈥� Feist recalled. 鈥淚 thought what a great end to all of this. I can put the cherry on the cake and go tell them about what I鈥檓 doing and move on and do something else.鈥�
NASA, however, had other plans for him.
鈥淭hey said 鈥榃e think you may have inadvertently solved a problem that NASA has been trying to solve for a very long time and that鈥檚 how to organize our space flight data so that it can be easily navigated,鈥欌�� Feist said.
鈥淚 essentially said to them 鈥業鈥檓 really happy to hear you鈥檙e going to do something with this idea and the work that I鈥檝e been doing鈥� and they said 鈥榃e鈥檙e not going to do something. You are.鈥欌��
Feist was given a series of projects to work on before he was offered a full-time position at the famed space agency. Now, he鈥檚 been officially working at NASA for approximately two years.
鈥淚t was really remarkable. To have my photo next to the NASA meatball is really something else. It hasn鈥檛 worn off,鈥� he said.
Feist鈥檚 work will help inform future space missions on data management and how to present collected information in a digestible way.
鈥淚t鈥檚 super fun,鈥� he said. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of really exciting work to do because we鈥檙e going back to the moon by 2024.鈥�
