The Apollo 10 astronauts brought back the message captured on film. The Monolith's energy affected Apollo 10's instrumentation, so that its crew almost didn't get back. As soon as the film Apollo 10 took came back to Earth, those Intelligence compartments which deal with UFOs were busy poring over information from the Monolith.
The government then used an early secret military space shuttle to go get the Monolith itself. This covert military spacecraft flew years before the first "official" NASA Shuttle's public flights in 1981. The spaceplane is operated by a secret military astronaut program out of Vandenburg Air Force Base, California, among other locations. The second flight mission of this unacknowledged military shuttle retrieved the Monolith, and brought it back to Earth in 1972 for study. [1]
After being retrieved, the Monolith was then transferred to a secret research facility. Scientific analysis of the Monolith was conducted at this domed underwater facility located north of Abaco, the northernmost of the Bahamas Islands. RCA Corporation is in charge of that experimentation research, Jesse says. Jesse stated, "They did it underwater, after they saw people dropping like flies. They figured that there would be better containment [of the Monolith's suspected cosmic energy emanations] underwater." He noted that the space beacon "has a sound to it, like it talks. It also gives off a light show." Dr. Michael Wolf shed additional light on the beacons. "They are 'postcards from the rim'. They emit both light and tone signals, sending a mathematical language. There may be five or more ET civilizations involved in setting up these beacons."