Keith's note: This pic from the film "Contact" is what it was like when we got our first image - "Earthrise" - in 2008. I was watching over the team's shoulders via iChat from the east coast and the image appeared - in reverse B&W - we saw the 'white' of space and the 'black' of the Moon. And then we flipped it. Awesome - like using a time machine to grab something from the past. Just like "Contact".

Below is the scene from "Contact" where a 1936 TV broadcast - sent back to Earth by an alien intelligence as a way to say "message received" - is slowly decoded.

The team at McMoons (Bldg 596 at NASA Ames Research Park) got the prime FR-900 tape drive up and running today at full capacity and has already downloaded new images. We have some new tricks up our sleeves - and we'll soon be showing you the best pics yet - plus some familiar ones clearer than before.

Source, Gemini VII.

Restored Photos: Project Gemini Comes to Life

"On 23 March 1965, the first of ten crewed Gemini spacecraft was launched carrying it's crew of two astronauts, Gus Grissom and John Young. The NASA Johnson Space Center and the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University today proudly unveil the Project Gemini Online Digital Archive. The archive contains the first high-resolution digital scans of the original Gemini flight films, now available in several formats with a click of your mouse."

On 6 January 2012, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin visited the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) located at Building 596 aka "McMoons" at the NASA Ames Research Park at Moffett Field, CA. Pictured (L to R): LOIRP Engineer Ken Zin, LOIRP Co-Lead Dennis Wingo, LOIRP Student Intern Neulyn Moss, Buzz Aldrin, LOIRP Image Specialist Austin Epps. Behind them is the FR-900 Tape drive restored and enhanced by LOIRP to play back the original analog data tapes generated by the five Lunar Orbiter missions in the 1960s. Larger image

Buzz Aldrin takes a moment to autograph our FR-900 tape drive. Larger image

NASA LRO Lunar Image: A Detailed Look at the Walls of Crater Aristarchus

"No wonder planners for the Apollo missions put this plateau high on its list of targets for human exploration. This amazing image was acquired on 10 November 2011 as LRO passed north-to-south about 70 km east of the crater's center while it was slewed 70 degrees to the west. The spacecraft was only 26 km (16.2 miles) above the surface; about two times lower than normal. For a sense of scale, that altitude is only a little over twice as high as commercial jets fly above the Earth!"