Apollo Program Director Samuel C. Phillips suggested to MSC Director Robert R. Gilruth that a meeting be held at MSC during the period of the Apollo 10 return flight to earth to review the status of experiment support facilities and the overall plans for science support operations during lunar missions and over an extended period of time.

Phillips pointed out that the results from the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package, the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Packages, the Lunar Geology Experiment, and the analyses of the returned lunar samples would be of inestimable scientific value. However, NASA in the dissemination of the scientific results would require a science operations and data management plan which would spell out the operational, support, management, data-handling, and science relationships.