Technologies that we've lost - and the quest to find them again, io9

"I asked NASA Watch's Keith Cowing about this, and he explained that this is just an urban legend. The schematics are all still around, mostly on microfiche, and any ancient computer files just hold images of the original plans as opposed to now unreadably obsolete data. Still, while the knowledge wasn't lost, it was certainly forgotten, and worse, it was badly organized. As Cowing - himself working on the rediscovery of old NASA documents with the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project - told me, all this archival information was basically abandoned until NASA's started working on the Constellation program last decade, and now that that project has been forgotten the information is again beginning to gather dust. If there is a point of disconnect, it's more in terms of how we understand the information and the different ways in which we approach science forty-five years on:"

"If anything's missing, it's actually more the explanation. I mean there is some stuff that will never be found again, but it's all there, and the stuff that isn't you can sort of figure out backwards. Sometimes you need the equivalent of a Rosetta Stone, because sometimes the way we think today is not the way they thought back then. Sometimes you need an index or a document that explains how they did things or their nomenclature. That's the one thing that's sometimes hard to find is what I call a bridge document, an answer guide to how they did the thing back in the sixties. There's no FAQ."

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.

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

After being on hiatus for a few months the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) will soon be back in action retrieving imagery from original Lunar Orbiter program data tapes and vintage tape drives that we have restored and enhanced. Armed with new software that will greatly enhance our image recovery process and other improvements, we should be able to produce new versions of original Lunar Orbiter imagery on a regular basis. Of course, we'll be posting all of it here.

Apollo 18: A Review And Interview With Technical Advisor Gerry Griffin

"People's fascination with space conspiracies has always intrigued me. Facts are irrelevant once someone has made up their mind about something - usually involving the big evil government covering something up - usually evidence of aliens visiting us. I have some personal experience with this via my involvement with the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) which is being run on a low budget basis outside the gate at NASA Ames Research Center in a McDonalds hamburger joint that closed years ago. The building was free and we were not fussy. With my co-lead Dennis Wingo and a lot of help from NASA and volunteers, we managed to restore images from the original 40+ year analog data tapes at unprecedented resolution when compared to what people saw in the 1960s. More information can be found at the official LOIRP website at http://www.moonviews.com

When we were getting ready to release the images some of the nutty websites got word and came up with all manner of zany conspiracy theories. My favorite was linking the fact that we were doing this in "McDonalds" with "McDonnell Douglas" and some evil dark conspiracy. The fact that they can't even note the difference in the spelling of these names says a lot. They also made a lot of the fact that ARC's Center Director is a former USAF Brigadier General. Oh yes, and there is that pirate flag I hung in the window - that didn't help either."

Keith's note: 45 Years ago today, on 23 August 1966, Lunar Orbiter 1 snapped the first photo of Earth as seen from lunar orbit (Larger view). While a remarkable image at the time, the full resolution of the image was never retrieved from the data stored from the mission. In 2008, this earthrise image was restored by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project at NASA Ames Research Center. We obtained the original data tapes from the mission (the last surviving set) and restored original FR-900 tape drives to operational condition using both 60s era parts and modern electronics. The following links provide background on the image, its restoration, and reactions to its release.

Here is a comparison of the full image in its original, familiar context (higher res)(print quality). You can download a 1.2 GB version from NASA here. Note: this is a very large file.

- Newly Restored Lunar Orbiter Image of Earth and Moon (Detail)
- How the Photo Was Taken
- House of Representatives Honors Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project
- Nimbus II and Lunar Orbiter 1 Imagery: A New Look at Earth in 1966
- Dumpster Diving for Science, Science Magazine
- What Lunar Orbiter 1 Was Seeing on 23 August 1966

The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) and its official website moonviews.com were mentioned during the activities of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) during its meetings at NASA Ames Research Center this week. The first slide was shown by Lars Perkins as part of his presentation to the NAC on 4 August 2011 about the activities of the NAC's Education and Public Outreach Committee. The second slide is from a presentation by NASA Lunar Science Institute Director Yvonne Pendleton during the EPO committee's meeting on 2 August 2011.

(L to R) Bob Richards, CEO, Moon Express, Keith Cowing, SpaceRef/LOIRP Co-Lead, Dennis Wingo, SkyCorp/LOIRP Co-Lead, George Whitesides, CEO, Virgin Galactic. Photo taken at the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) facility at Building 596 (aka "McMoons") at the NASA Ames Research Park at Moffett Field, CA on 29 July 2011.

NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver visits with students at the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) facility at Building 596 (aka "McMoons") at the NASA Ames Research Park at Moffett Field, CA on 28 July 2011.

This banner was printed out by Moon Express, a Google Lunar X-Prize competitor.

Keith Cowing, Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project co-lead. Photo taken by Nancy Atkinson from Universetoday.com

Keith Cowing, LOIRP Co-lead, and former NASA Administrator Dan Goldin during a visit by Goldin to the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) at Building 596 at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, CA on 21 June 2011. Keith's note: Having Dan visit was really cool. It was great to have him stop by and visit our rebel operation. I really enjoyed showing him around. Dan asked a string of very sharp, cogent questions and offered us some valuable advice. He totally gets the value of such things and the importance of history - and that we have adopted the mantra of "older-better-cheaper". Dan was at Ames as part of the memorial services for the late Baruch "Barry" Blumberg. Barry was a mutual friend of ours. As I mentioned at the memorial ceremony, Barry once told me "you and Dan are a lot alike. I just wish you two could get along". Well, after Barry's passing, we do. Barry's amazing "people skills" continue to work their magic. FYI the tape drive we were standing directly in front of was operating and is rather loud.

NASA NLSI: "I stopped by to visit the folks at McMoon, more widely known as the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project: moonviews.com/ More about the project below, but one of the cool parts is that the images are being restored in an old McDonald's at NASA Ames Research Center. Also note the nice geek touches like empty pizza boxes :) This project, LOIRP, is recovering decades old data, digitizing data from the Lunar Orbiter mission of the 1960's, thus bringing up the highest resolution data of the Moon from that time. This will greatly complement all the great Moon missions of this time, including the upcoming Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission launching in two weeks!"

Abandoned McDonald's Serves Restored NASA Moon Pictures, National Geographic

"Inside this abandoned Mcdonald's a bit of the past is moving into the future. Where customers used to down Big Macs, an ancient video tape machine spits out grainy images. Behind the counter, next to the Frymaster, there are endless stacks of tape reels. The former fast-food joint has now become mission command for a new effort to save some old NASA history."

Click on image for PDF version of poster

Poster presented at the 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by N. G. Moss, T. M. Harper, M. B. Motta, A. D. Epps

"While some candidate craters were observed that appeared in LROC data but not in Lunar Orbiter data, these were all very near the edge of discernable feature size and are almost certainly explained by various differences between the images (e.g. sun angle or viewing geometry). While our initial search did not find any discernable new cratering, we have shown that data from the original analog Lunar Orbiter tapes, as recovered by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery project, possesses the characteristics necessary to discern new craters at reasonably small sizes. If the entire Lunar Orbiter data set was recovered in this manner it may be possible for future researchers to apply automated methods to detect changes with much better chances of success."

Click on image for PDF version of poster

Poster presented at the 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by A. Epps, M. Sandler

"The goal of the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) is to digitize and archive the magnetic tape records generated by the five Lunar Orbiter spacecraft in the mid-1960s. The readout scanners utilized onboard the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft employed a phosphor-covered anode bombarded by an electron beam to focus a spot of light on 70mm film developed onboard the spacecraft. This light was modulated by the density of the image and read by a photomultiplier tube. Each individual pass of this scanning procedure across the 70mm film produced a thin strip of a larger image, referred to as a "framelet". The product of the spacecraft's readout system was a video waveform that was modulated and transmitted to three DSIF stations and recorded onto 2-inch magnetic tape via Ampex FR-900 data recorders. This document discusses the process by which these video signals were converted into digital images."

Click on image for PDF version of poster

A Study of the Value of Original Data Sources for Space Science Data - Poster presented at the 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by Dennis Wingo and Charles Byrne.

"In 1966-1967 NASA sent five spacecraft to the Moon to map potential landing areas for the Apollo program as well as for the first global map of a planetary body other than the Earth. Lunar Orbiter's I-III were in equatorial orbits with a periselene of ~44km and an aposelene of ~4000 km. Lunar Orbiter's IV-V were in polar orbits at various altitudes for global mapping and follow up on LO-I-II. Using a visible light 70mm film camera, each spacecraft took ~210 medium resolution and ~210 high resolution images. The original Lunar Orbiter analog tapes are in a remarkable state of preservation which has allowed a recovery of the data to the limit of the original film quality on the spacecraft. With modern software and computer methods, along with the preservation of the original data sources can allow future researchers to improve the quality of older data sets to provide new science from old sources. This "technoarcheology" represents a new resource for providing time based comparisons of planetary data."

Figure 1: Lunar Orbiter II sub-frame 2070H2 superimposed on LROC NAC image M116154252LE.

N. G. Moss¹ and T. M. Harper², M. B. Motta³, A. Epps^4
1LOIRP Project P.O. Box 375 Moffett Field, CA 94035, Neulynm-at-yahoo.com, ² LOIRP Project P.O. Box 375 Moffett Field, CA 94035, travis.martin.harper-at-gmail.com. ³ LOIRP Project P.O. Box 375 Moffett Field, CA 94035. Mbmotta-at-yahoo.com., ⁴Skycorp, Building 596, NASA Ames Research Park, Moffett Field, CA 94035, Austin.epps-at-gmail.com

Submitted to 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Introduction: In 1966 and 1967 NASA sent five Lunar Orbiters to photograph nearly the full surface of the moon. Each orbiter launched took images of different areas of the moons surface, or very high resolution images corresponding to lower resolution images previously taken. Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) is one of the several projects using these images for research. We are in possession of 1,478 2" original analog tapes from 3 Deep Space Network ground stations. We have taken hundreds of those analog tapes and converted them to digital form; with the majority of them being from Lunar Orbiter II which took images with .8 to 1 meter resolution.

D. R. Wingo¹ and C. J. Byrne², ¹Skycorp Incorporated, P.O. Box 375 Moffett Field, CA, wingod-at-skycorpinc.com, charles.byrne-at-verizon.net

Submitted to 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference

Introduction: The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) was founded in 2008 with funding from NASA ESMD to recover Lunar Orbiter images from the original 2" analog magnetic tapes that had been held in protective storage by the National Archives and NASA for 40 years. Of the three central questions that had to be answered for project success, (can the tape drives be brought back to life, are the tapes any good, what is the quality of the data the best available), the final question, whether or not the analog image data on the tapes was superior in quality to the existing film was the ultimate criterion for success.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, mission is sponsoring a series of workshops for educators of students in grades 6-12. These workshops will focus on lunar science, exploration and how our understanding of the moon is evolving with the new data from current and recent lunar missions.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has allowed scientists to measure the coldest known place in the solar system, map the surface of the moon in unprecedented detail and accuracy, find evidence of recent lunar geologic activity, characterize the radiation environment around the moon and its potential effects on future lunar explorers and much, much more!

Workshop participants will learn about these and other recent discoveries, reinforce their understanding of lunar science concepts, interact with lunar scientists and engineers, work with real LRO data and learn how to bring these data and information to their students using hands-on activities aligned with local, state and national standards. Laptops are strongly encouraged for those participating in this workshop.

Workshops will take place in the following locations:

-- June 20-24, 2011 -- Herrett Center for Arts and Science, Twin Falls, Idaho
-- June 27-July 1, 2011 -- Hinds Community College, Utica Campus, Utica, Miss.
-- June 27-July 1, 2011 -- McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center, Concord, N.H.
-- July 25-29, 2011 -- John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.
-- Aug. 1-5, 2011 -- Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz.

Applications for three workshops are due April 1, 2011. Applications for other workshops are due at a later date. For more information and to register for the workshops, visit http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/lwe/index.html. Questions about these workshops should be directed to Andrea.J.Jones@nasa.gov.

Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, Data Recovery Review Store

"February 2007 was the first time that Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing, a former NASA employee, saw the four Ampex FM-900 tape drives, which had been stored in Nancy Evans overcrowded garage next to a chicken run. Each drive was about 6 feet tall, 3 feet wide, as deep as a refrigerator, and coated with a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. They were stored with a pallet of incomplete manuals and schematics for the tape drives, along with hard copies of data related to the lunar images. Meanwhile, the tapes were stored safely in a climate-controlled warehouse belonging to JPL. There were about 1500 tapes, all packed into boxes, stacked four deep on pallets, and shrink-wrapped . After becoming interested in the project, Wingo and Cowing spent about a year looking for funding, facilities, documentation and expertise. They found expertise in the person of Ken Zin, an Army veteran who has a lifetime of experience in working with analog tape machines, who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In April 2008, Wingo and Cowing rented two Budget trucks, loaded up the tape drives and documentation into one truck, and loaded the pallets of magnetic tape into the second. At Ames, the Lunar Science Institute had just opened, and was prepared to assist the team in finding physical facilities. Since the team required a facility with proper heating and cooling and a sink, the many vacant buildings were whittled down to two: a barber shop, and a McDonald that had closed mere weeks before they arrived. Since the barber shop was relatively small, using it would require that the tapes be stored at a remote warehouse. On the other hand, the McDonald was much larger, had good lighting, adequate power and air conditioning, excellent parking and decent bathrooms. It turned out to need some improvements such as upgraded Internet access and electrical wiring, since the installed wiring was not designed to power racks of equipment requiring 5 kW (the equivalent of fifty 100 watt light bulbs) out in the dining area."

"Keith Cowing talks about the kind of hacks made famous by the Apollo 13 mission, instances where the crew had to improvise using materials at hand. He discusses the following: Skylab Rescue – the umbrella used to replace solar insulation and boating tools bought at a local marina; Syncom Rescue – tools made out of plastic and duct tape; Apollo 13 CO2 removal, use of LEM engine, etc.; Apollo lunar rover fender repair; STS-120 EVA solar panel repair, and ISS camera tracker made from a power tool."

Four decades later, recovering lunar images (photos), CNET

"Around 2005, space entrepreneur Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing of NASA Watch learned of prior attempts at restoring the images. With a renewed interest from NASA in moon exploration and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter set to go to the moon in 2009. Wingo and Cowing became more and more motivated to work towards restoring the tapes."

From Obsolete Technology, New Science, NOVA, PBS

"Today, an engineer named Dennis Wingo is working to resurrect that data. He co-leads the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project--which, as the name implies, is working to pry all that old data off of the tapes. So far, he's been successful, thanks to a combination of skill and pure luck. Wingo's team located one of the only NASA computer tape drives left in existence, and carefully restored it to its former glory in order to digitize the old tapes onto modern hard drives."

"We took 40 year old data tapes, tape drives that had been in a garage for 30 years, found elderly engineers, and reverse-engineered ancient technology to provide enhanced imagery from the five Lunar Orbiter missions in a fashion - and resolution - inconceivable at the time that the missions were conducted."

23 May Update from Keith and Dennis: If you were at our presentation today at Make Faire and are interested in this Titan 1 project please leave your information in the comment field below. We will save this information in order to be able to contact you - but we won't publish it online. Thanks!

Spacing out at Maker Faire

"One of the de facto themes of this year's Faire, so perfectly represented by our Gothic Raygun Rocketship design centerpiece, is space and space hacking. This serves as the perfect lead-in to our upcoming DIY Space issues of MAKE. Here, our roving court photographer, Blake Maloof, captures some of the space-related happenings around the Faire."

Famous Hacks at NASA Center Stage Sunday 11:00 AM - 11:20 AM

"Keith Cowing will talk about the kind of hacks made famous by the Apollo 13 mission, instances where the crew had to improvise using materials at hand. He'll discuss the following: Skylab Rescue - the umbrella used to replace solar insulation and boating tools bought at a local marina; Syncom Rescue - tools made out of plastic and duct tape; Apollo 13 CO2 removal, use of LEM engine, etc.; Apollo lunar rover fender repair; STS-120 EVA solar panel repair, and ISS camera tracker made from a power tool. Keith will also talk about some of his own projects including the greenhouse he designed and built on Devon Island (and some serious hacks) near the North Pole. Currently, he's working in partnership with NASA Ames to restore a 1960's era Titan I ICBM & convert it for educational use."

McMoon (Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project) Center Stage Sunday 11:30 AM - 11:50 AM

"Dennis Wingo (with some help from Keith Cowing) will talk about the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project. This project started with rescuing tapes containing data from the first lunar survey but required repairing tape drives and writing software to decode the data. Learn about the images they were able to recover and the expertise required to make the repairs, locates parts, etc. This project is housed at a former McDonald's restaurant at NASA Ames, now known as McMoon."

Die Mondschatz-Jäger, Der Speigel

"O schwöre nicht beim Mond, dem wandelbaren, der immerfort in seiner Scheibe wechselt, damit nicht wandelbar dein Lieben sei!", weist bei Shakespeare die Julia ihren Romeo an. Wie Recht Julia mit dieser Aussage über die wandelbare Oberfläche des Erdtrabanten hatte, zeigt gerade eine Handvoll Wissenschaftler im kalifornischen Mountain View. Sie haben sich der alten Magnetbänder angenommen, auf denen die Nasa in den sechziger Jahren die ersten Aufnahmen von der Mondoberfäche speicherte. Und umgekehrt vom blauen Planeten aus der Mondperspektive."

NASA Dives Into Its Past to Retrieve Vintage Satellite Data, Science (subscription)

"Last month, researchers working out of an abandoned McDonald's restaurant on the grounds of NASA Ames Research Center recovered data collected by NASA's Nimbus II satellite on 23 September 1966. The satellite soared over Earth in a polar orbit every 108 minutes, taking pictures of cloud cover and measuring heat radiated from the planet's surface, and creating a photo mosaic of the globe 43 years ago. The resulting image is the oldest and most detailed from NASA's Earth-observing satellites. It's also the latest success story in what researchers call techno-archaeology: pulling data from archaic storage systems. Once forgotten and largely unreadable with modern equipment, old data tapes are providing researchers with new information on changes in the surfaces of Earth and the moon..."

... The LOIRP team obtained $750,000 from NASA and private enterprise and enlisted the assistance of a retired Ampex engineer. They cleaned, rebuilt, and reassembled one drive, then designed and built equipment to convert the analog signals into an exact 16-bit digital copy. "It was like dumpster diving for science," says Cowing, co-team leader at LOIRP. In November 2008, the team recovered their first image: a famous picture of an earthrise taken by Lunar Orbiter 1 on 23 August 1966. The team's new high-resolution version was so crisp and clear that it revealed many previously obscured details, such as a fog bank lying along the coast of Chile. "We thought if the Earth's surface looks that good a quarter of a million miles away, what does the moon's surface look like 100 miles beneath it?" says Cowing."

Click on image to enlarge

On 23 August 1966, the Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft took a photo of the Earth as seen from lunar orbit. This image, albeit grainy, quickly became an icon of the Space Age. This "earthrise" photo, while spectacular at the time, was never retrieved and processed to the full level of detail contained in the image. This was due in great part of the available technology at the time. Computer image processing was in its infancy.

Forty two years later, the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) managed to retrieve the image from original data tapes using restored tape drives from the 1960s. In so doing the level of detail present in the image was unparalleled. Subsequently, other images have been retrieved with the ultimate goal of obtaining all of the images returned by the five Lunar Orbiters.

One of the striking aspects of this newly enhanced image is the amount of detail that can be seen on Earth at a resolution of perhaps 1 km/pixel taken from a quarter of a million miles away. Among the details visible is the extent of the southern polar ice cap.

The LOIRP required a lot of what has come to be called "techoarchaeology" that is, going back in time to the original data and recording devices, using modern enhancements. The expertise gained by the LOIRP team eventually caught the attention of the folks at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

Data from the Nimbus weather and earth observation satellite - in orbit at the same time as the Lunar Orbiters were circling the Moon - had languished for years in the national archives until John Moses NASA Goddard Space Flight Center had them digitized.  

Dr. Walt Meir of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, after seeing the work that the LOIRP team had done in potentially identifying the Antarctic sea ice in the Lunar Orbiter 1 Earthrise image, and recognizing the similarity between the raw data of the Nimbus and Lunar Orbiter data, provided a grant to the LOIRP team to process the Nimbus data into a modern format and to correct image artifacts that are common to both types of images.  

The LOIRP team accomplished this, and rendered the images into the Google Earth format using a variety of internally developed techniques and elements of the NASA Ames developed NASA World Wind Java software development kit.

To date some of the images taken by Nimbus II have been enhanced and mapped into Google Earth. One date in particular was of interest to the LOIRP - 23 August 1966. As the images were enhanced and dropped into Google Earth it became clear that we have imagery that overlapped in time to show the weather on that late August day as evening crept up on Africa and Europe.

In New York City, just over the Earth's limb as seen from lunar orbit, the Beatles were preparing to play at Shea Stadium ...

You can download a KMZ file of these images here for viewing in Google Earth.

Related Links

- Techno-Archaeology Rescues Climate Data from Early Satellites
- LOIRP Aids In Finding Google Earth Images from 1966
- Newly Restored Lunar Orbiter Image of Earth and Moon (Detail)

The original Lunar Orbiter 1 image of Earth on 23 August 1966 (click on image to enlarge)

Nimbus II imagery of Earth on 23 August 1966 (click on image to enlarge)

Overlap of Nimbus II imagery onto Lunar Orbiter 1 imagery (click on image to enlarge)

Techno-Archaeology Rescues Climate Data from Early Satellites, National Snow and Ice Data Center

Image: Forty-three years after the Nimbus II satellite collected these data, a team from NSIDC and NASA recovered a global image from September 23, 1966. In this view over Antarctica, overlaid on Google Earth, the Ross Ice Shelf appears clearly at left.

"Starting with the methods developed for the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) at NASA Ames Research Park, a team at NSIDC worked with Dennis Wingo at LOIRP to search NASA archives for the original Nimbus tapes containing raw images and calibrations. Their first goal was to read and reprocess the data at a higher resolution, removing errors resulting from the limits of the original processing."

Technoarcheology and Earth Sciences, the Recovery of Nimbus II High Resolution Infrared Radiometer Data

"In 2008 the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) began a NASA ESMD sponsored project to resurrect 43+ year old Ampex FR-900 instrumentation tape drives for the purpose of recovering, before the capability to do so becomes impossible, the last surviving master tapes from the five Lunar Orbiter spaceraft that orbited the Moon in support of Apollo in 1966-67. Our project is proceeding on our task to do so. During our research on the Ampex tape drives we scoured the NASA Technical Reports Server as well as any other source we could get our hands on. During this search, we found, through a Cadillac (yes the car) user group, a gentleman from Alaska who had worked on these drives during the 1960's. We were able to connect and while he had retired and the units were long gone to that great scrap yard in the sky, he told me something interesting. He said that during his time working on the drives that they had sent "miles and miles, thousands of tapes" to NASA during the Nimbus weather satellite program. This is where our new tale begins."

"One of the things that the LOIRP team is going to do is to take the Nimbus II HRIR data from August 23rd 1966 and overlay that with the Lunar Orbiter 1 data on the same date for a composite mosaic. There is potential for a significant synergy between Lunar Orbiter, Apollo, and Nimbus II and III data sets. This type of synergy could provide many benefits to the Earth sciences community."

The STS-130 patch was designed by the crew to reflect both the objectives of the mission and its place in the history of human spaceflight. The main goal of the mission is to deliver Node 3 and the Cupola to the International Space Station (ISS). Node 3, named "Tranquility," will contain life support systems enabling continued human presence in orbit aboard the ISS. The shape of the patch represents the Cupola, which is the windowed robotics viewing station, from which astronauts will have the opportunity not only to monitor a variety of ISS operations, but also to study our home planet.

The image of Earth depicted in the patch is the first photograph of the Earth taken from the moon by Lunar Orbiter I on August 23, 1966. As both a past and a future destination for explorers from the planet Earth, the moon is thus represented symbolically in the STS-130 patch.

The Space Shuttle Endeavour is pictured approaching the ISS, symbolizing the Space Shuttle's role as the prime construction vehicle for the ISS. The NASA insignia design for shuttle flights is reserved for use by the astronauts and for other official use as the NASA Administrator may authorize. Public availability has been approved only in the form of illustrations by the various news media. When and if there is any change in this policy, which we do not anticipate, it will be publicly announced. STS130-S-001 (September 2009) --- high res (1.5 M) low res (98 K)

Digital doomsday: the end of knowledge, New Scientist

"The physical survival of stored data, however, is just the start of the problem of retrieving it, as space enthusiasts Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing have discovered. They have been leading a project, based at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, to retrieve high-resolution images from old magnetic tapes. The tapes contain raw data sent back from the five Lunar Orbiter missions in the 1960s. At the time, only low-resolution images could be retrieved. The tapes were wrapped in plastic, placed in magnetically impervious metal canisters and remain in pristine condition. "It is a miracle from my experience with similar commercial tapes of a similar age," says Wingo. But to get the raw data off the tapes, the team first had to restore old tape drives saved by a former NASA employee. That was the biggest challenge, says Cowing. "There was a lizard living inside one of them." Once they began to retrieve the raw data, converting it into a usable form was only possible after a three-month search uncovered a document with the "demodulation" equations."

Miles O'Brien and "This Week in Space" are back for their first show of 2010. In this episode: the space nation awaits direction from President Obama, Endeavour gets ready to deliver a room with a view, how an abandoned McDonald's is being used to restore closeups of the Moon, a space telescope finds new planets, plus an interview with Hubble-Hugger-In-Chief John Grunsfeld. You also can subscribe for free to watch episodes from iTunes.

This image represents a portion of the central uplift within the crater Copernicus. The image, LOV-152-H1, was taken by Lunar Orbiter V on 16 August 1967 at an altitude of 103 km. The spacecraft was looking straight down at the crater as it snapped this picture series. The resolution of this image is 2.2 meters/pixel. [Click on image to enlarge]

Below, you can see the increase in contrast and resolution that LOIRP has attained when you compare the high resolution USGS image (left) and the one obtained by LOIRP on 10 December 2009 (right). [Click on image to enlarge]

Keith's note: On Thursday, 10 December 2009, we conducted a live webcast from the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) at "McMoon's" i.e. Building 596 at the NASA Ames Research Park.

Dennis Wingo and I give you a tour of our project including a walk through of the abandoned McDonald's that has been our base of operations since 2008. We show you how we rack tapes, play them back, capture the data on a computer, and then stitch the image framelets together. You can look over our shoulders and see the imagery as it appears on one of our old TV monitors. We've picked an especially interesting tape to show you. Eventually this image will be posted online at LPI and submitted to the NSSDC.

This project has been funded and supported by a bunch of imaginative folks at ESMD, IPP, NLSI, ARC, SkyCorp, SpaceRef Interactive, and Odyssey Moon with assistance from a range of people ranging from retired Lunar Orbiter project personnel and Lockheed Martin employees to local high school and college students. Soon, we expect to have two tape drives fully operational and to be able to produce images on a daily basis.

Oh yes, in case you are wondering, I donate my time (and money) to this project. What fun. Its like bringing a time machine back to life in a high tech junkyard. We are looking to begin some pervasive EPO in coordination with NLSI and the Challenger Center for Space Science Education in the very near future.

[Click on image to enlarge] Keith's note: This image was taken on 21 November 1966 by Lunar Orbiter II at an altitude of 44 miles. The image is taken from frame 92, Framelet 445, and has resolution is 0.98 meters/pixel. As such the large boulder that has left a trail is around 6-7 meters in diameter. The image on the left shows the highest resolution image available online at LPI. On the right is the raw unproceesed image we retrieved this afternoon. While the large boulder's trail is seen in both images, the details of that trail and the rest of the boulder field are much sharper in our newly retrieved image.

By coincidence this large boulder is very similar in size to "House Rock" a large boulder north of the Haughton Mars Research Station on Devon Island. That's me standing on top if it.

This rock is a favorite place to pose for photos and was named after the large rock that Astronaut Jack Schmitt posed next to during the Apollo 17 mission.

[Click to enlarge] Keith's note: These images are taken from Lunar Orbiter II image LOII_092H1 Framelet 522. On the left is the highest resolution scanned version available online at LPI (or USGS). On the right is our partially processed version that we retrieved this morning. In addition to providing a much sharper image, note that our new image also allows contrast to be controlled such that features can seen in the areas that are darkened in the older image.

Right now we are focusing on retrieving Lunar Orbiter II images at the request of both LPI and USGS since high resolution (modern) scans have yet to be done for this mission's images. We hope to have the entire image online later today complete with collapsed lava tubes (?) and giant boulders sitting in the middle of otherwise flat plains. With our recently enhanced (restored) original FR-900 tape drive and its recently restored sister drive we will soon have two fully functional drives in operation and will be able to (eventually) retrieve and release images on a daily basis.

I will be doing a live webcast tomorrow at 1pm PST wherein we give you a tour of our facility and watch as we pull a new image back from history and into the present. Details to follow.

[Click on image to enlarge] Keith's note: Tonight we are testing out our newest Mac computer at the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project located at NASA ARC. We'll be using this machine (8 processors and 10 TB of storage) to do near-real time processing of imagery once we have pulled it off of original Lunar Orbiter analog data tapes using our restored FR-900 tape drives. We hope to do a live webcast this coming Thursday so that you can look over our shoulders as we bring another image to light for the first time in more than 40 years.

Tonight, as we were flying through a portion of one of the images we came across a boulder field. Here is the image archive at LPI - subframe H3, Framelet 323. The image was taken by Lunar Orbiter II on 20 Nov 1966 at an altitude of 52.2 miles with a ground resolution of 1.14 meters/pixel. The framelet image shown here is approximately 220 meters across. You can clearly make out a number of boulders around 1 meter in size sitting on the surface.

Dennis Wingo: Last night on the Ampex mailing list the following message was posted:

Over on the oldvtrs list, someone pointed out this eBay item: 110459620505

Don

I thought this was interesting and since I am always looking for spares for our LOIRP FR-900's I checked it out on eBay. Here is the page I found.

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When I looked I was pretty certain that these were boards from our FR-900 machines. It had the right part numbers, so I called Ken Zin at home the night before Thanksgiving and asked him to verify, which he did and noted that these are newer version boards of the ones that we have!! So I bid on them and won them today.

I got this message from Don Norwood later:

Dennis:

Oh my, from the limited info I have, I can see that now! And in fact, they're not upside down in the pic as that orientation is correct for the FR-900. Wow! I hope you can use them!

So, after winning the boards on Ebay, we are pursuing the boards to get them shipped to us and to see if this fellow has some more. We will try to get the story from him of his dad and how he might have come by these extremely rare boards. In the year and a half of our project, this is the FIRST time that we have found anything related to the FR-900 hardware that did not come from Nancy Evans.

Louisa Smith visiting the lab today.

Engineer Ken Kledzik designing and building a new VCO for the FR-900

Ken still working today on the VCO design and build

Our pirate flag, with the sun behind it.

Lunar Orbiter II_092 image tape being run.

The LOIRP Project has reached a major milestone of having two Ampex FR-900 Instrumentation Tape Drives operational at once. This will allow us to accelerate the production of images. This is probably the first time in 30 years that two FR-900s have been operational in the same room at the same time.

Keith's note: we are working to get our second FR-900 tape drive restored and operational. Once that is accomplished the LOIRP will embark upon a new program with a dramatically enhanced capability to retrieve - and release images.

Image: This is one of our original FR-900 Ampex heads with two new preamps. Part of our upgrade program - a Silicon Transistor Preamp and Germanium Preamp

Dennis Wingo from the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) will be teaching a class at HackerDojo in 4 November 2009.

HackerDojo is located at 140 South Whisman Road in Mountain View, CA (Map) from 6 to 7:30 pm.

We hope to stream this presentation live.

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Surface Restoration - Engineers restore high-resolution photos of the Moon, Technology Review (paid subscribers only)

"The images of the Moon's surface taken by five NASA Lunar Orbiter satellites in 1966 and 1967 are still among the most detailed ever made. The original analog data, beamed down to Earth to plan landing sites for the Apollo missions, was recorded on magentic tapes that collected dust for decades and were nearly discarded. Now a team of engineers at an abandoned McDonald's at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, CA is processing the data using restored and custom-built equipment, enabling a public that saw only snapshopts of these historic images to view them at their full resolution for the first time."

This image (LO3_194_H3) was taken by Lunar Orbiter III on 22 February 1967 at 5:24:14 GMT at an altitude of 54.27 km above the lunar surface. High resolution frame 3 clearly shows the Surveyor 1 spacecraft sitting on the lunar surface complete with a long shadow.

Surveyor 1 landed on the Moon on 2 June 1966 in the Ocean of Storms (Oceanus Procellarum) at 2.45 degrees South latitude, 43.22 degrees West longitude.

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This image has been recovered in its original high resolution format by LOIRP staff from original Lunar Orbiter project data tapes using restored tape drive hardware and will eventually be submitted to the PDS (Planetary Data System).

A full resolution version of this image will be placed online at the NASA Lunar Science Institute.

The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) is located at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA. Funding and support for this project has been provided by NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, NASA Innovative Partnerships Program, NASA Lunar Science Institute, NASA Ames Research Center, Odyssey Moon LLC, SkyCorp Inc., and SpaceRef Interactive Inc.

For more information on the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) visit http://www.moonviews.com

For information on NASA's Lunar Science Institute visit http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov/

For information on NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate visit http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/

Yesterday the LRO team released a new image of the Apollo 14 landing site. You can clearly make out the paths that the crew walked as well as the location of the Apollo 14 Antares Lunar Module Descent Stage.

In June 2009 LOIRP issued its own view and analysis of this landing site - as seen by Lunar Orbiter III back in 1967.

Comparing our high resolution image of the site with that taken by LRO clearly shows no feature where Antares' Descent Stage now stands [larger image]. While the resolution of the Lunar Orbiter image (0.8 meters/pixel) would probably not reveal astronaut tracks in great detail, we're rather certain that it would have seen an object the size of Antares' Descent Stage.

As such, we're pretty certain that the Apollo 14 mission landed on the Moon!

Image: a portion of our set of Lunar Orbiter data tapes at McMoon's - an abandoned McDonalds onsite at NASA Ames Research Park, home of the LOIRP - Lunar Orbiter Image recovery Project.

Here at the LOIRP (Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Process) project there are two different phases of the image retrieval process that are distinct from each other. The second phase, the production of the vast majority of all the of the Lunar Orbiter images, will simply involve putting tapes on the tape drive machines, acquiring the data, and processing them into images.

However, we're still in the first phase of the project where we need to search through tapes in a painstaking fashion just to find the images we are interested in downloading. Once we find what we are looking for, downloading is a snap and can be done in a matter of hours.

Finding the images using a jumbled nomenclature and labeling system last used more than 40 years ago is part of what we call "Technoarchaeology".

This image (LO_IV 4094) of the Moon's south pole was taken by Lunar Orbiter IV on 16 May 1967 at 16:00:08 GMT. This image is identified as Frame 4094,high resolution subframe h1. Large craters visible in this image include Shackleton, Amundsen, and Scott.

A larger web version of this image is online here. A full, high resolution version of this image is online here at the NLSI.

Austin Epps sitting in the LOIRP lab at "McMoons" at NASA Ames Research Center downloading imagery from an original Lunar Orbiter data tape using a restored FR-900 tape drive on 18 August 2009

Austin Epps, our ever vigilant (and creative) student LOIRP employee, sitting admist our all-Mac operation, downloading 40 year old Lunar Orbiter images. Click on image to enlarge.

"I have been involved in the illumination analysis of the lunar south pole for a while and your reference image (http://images.spaceref.com/news/2009/LO-IV-179-H1.label.jpg) seemed incorrect based on going over such images so many times.  I checked it against Clementine imagery and it turns out that the labels you have are in the wrong places.  I have attached a jpeg of the correct placements for the South Pole and Shackleton." - James Fincannon, NASA GRC

This image, LO-IV-179-H1, taken by Lunar Orbiter IV on May 24, 1967 at 16:19:23.809 GMT, shows a portion of the lunar south polar region. A much larger version [1.8 MB JPG] can be downloaded here. You can download the full resolution image [692 MB tiff] here at NLSI.

The altitude of the spacecraft when this image was taken was 3,591.83 kilometers. The resolution of the image is 78.432 meters per pixel.

Spacecraft Position: Altitude: 3591.83 km, Latitude: -71.38°, Longitude: -96.22°
Principal Point: Latitude: -69.52°, Longitude: -74.07°
Illumination: Sun Azimuth: 68.15°, Incident Angle: 82.85°, Emission Angle: 11.24°, Phase Angle: 94.08°, Alpha: -11.23°

Lockheed Martin Corporation has donated the labor required to erect a class 10,000 clean room to the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP).  This clean room will help protect our refurbished 1960's era Ampex FR-900 tape drives from the environment inside NASA Ames Research Park Building 596 aka "McMoons", which was originally constructed to house a McDonalds restaurant.

In the 1960's these tape drives were operated in an old style computer room, with raised floors ultra-clean air, and constant air conditioning.  Since our building's air conditioning system was sized for the heat of the kitchen and lots of customers, we are able to maintain the temperature to near optimum conditions.  However, dust and dirt are still a problem with the finely tuned machine.  

One large dust particle could break a head tip if it went into it in the wrong direction.  As such, this 10 x 12 foot clean room will provide a more optimal environment for both of the tape drives.  

The clean room has a positive air pressure and heavy filtering of the air to reduce dust particles in the air.  The positive air pressure also helps to keep outside floor dirt from being sucked up in the fans that cool the machines.

The Lockheed Martin team who helped in the assembly of the portable clean room were Bob Allen, Lance Ellingson, Robert Phillips, and David Leskovsky.

"This generous gift from Lockheed Martin will help us to keep the our tape drives operating better in an environment similar to what they were designed for" said Dennis Wingo, LOIRP project lead.

This image (LO_V-5030) of Earth was taken on 8 August 1967 at 09:05:11 GMT by the Lunar Orbiter V spacecraft in orbit around the Moon at an altitude of 5,872.85 km. This image has been described as being the first image ever taken of a "full Earth" from space. [Larger image]

Lunar Orbiter V was launched on 1 August 1967 arrived in a nearly polar orbit on 5 August at 12:48 p.m. EDT. Images were taken between 6-19 August and were sent back to Earth on 27 August 1967.

This is the orientation of Earth as Lunar Orbiter V snaped its photo from Lunar Orbit

It is easy to make out a number of geographic features in this image. [Larger image]

In addition, you can see that the detail of the clouds - especially over the Indian Ocean is much greater in this image. Further processing of this image should yield even greater detail. [Larger image]

This is one of only three images of the Earth taken from the five lunar orbiter spacecraft. In its full resolution form, you can easily see Sicily, Cyprus, the Caspian Sea, lake Bakial, and other features such as the Nile delta. The Chinese coast is visible on the upper right as well as India and Ceylon in the center of the image. In the lower right the Indonesian islands are also visible. The estimated resolution of the image on the Earth is approximately 5 kilometers.

This is the 2 inch tape reel on which this image was stored. Note on the label [much larger image] that "L.O.E." refers to "Lunar Orbiter E" aka "Lunar Orbiter V". The tape was recorded on day 238 of 1967 local time i.e. 26 August 1967. Starting at 06:34:38 GMT and ending at 07:26:10 GMT

This image was not in the original mission plan. According to Destination Moon: A History of the Lunar Orbiter Program (NASA TM X-3487):

"Photography commenced at 7:22 p.m. EDT on August 6. At this time the spacecraft took its first photograph of the Moon at a distance of about 6,000 kilometers from the lunar surface. The target was a previously unknown area of the far side. Then it executed a maneuver early on August 7 [294] that lowered the perilune to 100 kilometers while maintaining a 6,023-kilometer apolune. The spacecraft continued farside photography, exposing eighteen out of nineteen frames during the first part of the mission. The nineteenth was a "film set" frame, moved through the photo subsystem in an eight hour interval to prevent film from setting and Bimat from drying out. While this was a planned item In the film's budget, the decision which program officials made early on August 7 changed the next scheduled "film set" frame significantly. They decided to use it to take a photograph of the Earth with the 610 mm high-resolution camera lens instead of passing It unexposed through the system.

Site VA-9, as the Earth photograph was identified, had not been in the original plan. Program officials decided, however, that the position of Lunar Orbiter V relative to the Moon and the Earth and the Earth's position relative to the Sun afforded a very fine opportunity to take such a picture. The Langley program planning staff together with flight controllers implemented a plan to make an Earth photograph when the spacecraft neared apolune between orbits 7 and 8. Since the spacecraft's orbit geometry kept it in view of Earth at all times, the Moon would not appear in [295] the photograph.

Exactly seven hours twenty-three minutes elapsed between the exposure of the previous photograph of Site VA-8 and the moment when Lunar Orbiter V's camera made the historic picture of the nearly full Earth on August 8 at about 9:05 Greenwich Mean Time. Shutter speed was 1/100 second, but the Earth's high albedo caused some overexposure of the film. This was unavoidable. Later Langley Research Center photography specialists successfully applied image enhancement techniques, using magnetic tape video records of the readout of the photograph, to bring out details which would not have shown up in a negative reconstructed from the raw readout data. (Note that enhancement techniques did not involve any "doctoring" of photographic data in order to "show" something which was not there.)

Approximately 149° of arc of the Earth's surface appeared clearly in the photograph. It illustrated the possible synoptic weather observations that a satellite could conduct in cislunar space or that could be made from the Moon."

This image has been recovered in its original high resolution format by LOIRP staff from original Lunar Orbiter project data tapes using restored tape drive hardware and will eventually be submitted to the PDS (Planetary Data System).

A full resolution version of this image is now online at the NASA Lunar Science Institute here (1.07 GB TIFF)

The first image recovered by LOIRP was the iconic "Earthrise" image taken by Lunar Orbiter a year prior to this Lunar Orbiter V image.

The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) is located at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA. Funding and support for this project has been provided by NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, NASA Innovative Partnerships Program, NASA Lunar Science Institute, NASA Ames Research Center, Odyssey Moon LLC, SkyCorp Inc., and SpaceRef Interactive Inc.

For more information on the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) visit http://www.moonviews.com

For information on NASA's Lunar Science Institute visit http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov/

For information on NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate visit http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/

Dennis Wingo, from the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP), recently conducted a seminar on the LOIRP and our progress to date for students attending the current session of the Singularity University at NASA Ames Research Center. Next week Dennis will conduct a similar session for students attending the International Space University, also in residence this summer at NASA Ames.

This is all in keeping with our continued interest in having students participate in our project. To date, students have made a significant contribution to the success of the LOIRP.

MOON PICTURES: 1960s Orbiter Images Restored, National Geographic

All these steps took their toll on the quality of the images: Much like making a photocopy of a photocopy, the images of the moon created 40 years ago were fairly fuzzy and lacking in detail. But some NASA scientists had the foresight to make magnetic tape recordings of the radio-wave transmissions mid-way through the process. Now, after recovering the decades-old recordings and refurbishing outdated tape drives, a team of volunteers has begun digitizing the most famous images from the 1960s Lunar Orbiter missions with much-improved clarity and detail.

APOLLO 11: New Before-and-After Photos of Moon Bases, National Geographic

"Despite extensive restoration efforts, this photo is fuzzier and grainier than many of the restored 1960s orbiter images because of repeated viewings of the magnetic tape on which the photo was recorded."

On Monday evening a lavish reception was held at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. The emcee for the event was Neil deGrasse Tyson. At one point, Tyson talked about the recent LRO images taken of the Apollo landing sites - and the hardware left behind. Our Apollo 11 landing site image was used to set the context for the LRO picture. Mention was also made of the LOIRP - Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project. Here is a video shot with a small camera of Tyson's comments regarding our image.

Moon Orbiter to Photograph Apollo 11 Landing Site, Space.com

"Taking the something old, something new approach is the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, located at the Ames Research Center in the heart of California's Silicon Valley. This team effort is led by Dennis Wingo of SkyCorp, Inc. in Huntsville, Alabama and Keith Cowing of SpaceRef Interactive, Inc. of Reston, Virginia.

The Apollo sites themselves are extremely well characterized thanks to human explorers dispatched to those individual locales, Schmidt noted. LRO images of these areas will let us see the landers -- and likely other artifacts such as the lunar buggies used in the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 missions - all of which will no doubt be very powerful in ways beyond mere science, he said."

The lost NASA tapes: Restoring lunar images after 40 years in the vault, Computerworld

"Liquid nitrogen, vegetable steamers, Macintosh workstations and old, refrigerator-size tape drives. These are just some of the tools a new breed of Space Age archeologists is using to sift through the digital debris from the early days of NASA, mining the information in ways unimaginable when it was first gathered four decades ago. At stake is data that could show Earth's risk of an asteroid strike, shed light on global warming and -- perhaps -- even satisfy those who think the moon landings were a hoax. The most visible of the archeologists is arguably Dennis Wingo, head of Skycorp Inc., a small aerospace engineering firm in Huntsville, Ala. He's the driving force behind the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, operating out of a decommissioned McDonald's (since dubbed McMoon's) at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. The project's goal is to recover and enhance as many of the original lunar landing images as possible."

La luna nel forno - La storia del progetto McMoon, Wittgenstein

"Nello spazio nessuno puo sentirti urlare". Non c'e atmosfera, e il suono non si propaga. Nemmeno sulla luna. Lo schianto contro la superficie lunare di quei cinque accrocchi grandi come un chiosco dei gelati avvenne nel silenzio. Di loro non restarono che i racconti. Questa storia era cominciata prima. Il primo Lunar Orbiter fu lanciato nello spazio il 10 agosto 1966. A bordo non c'era nessuno. La sua missione era di fotografare la superficie lunare in preparazione dello sbarco dell'Apollo 11, che sarebbe avvenuto tre anni dopo. Allo stesso scopo, altri quattro apparecchi simili furono inviati intorno alla luna nei mesi successivi."

This pirate flag image sits at the bottom of the LRO Mission Team's Blog. At the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) located in an abandoned McDonalds outside the gate at ARC, we adopted a similar motif ... we fly a similar flag in our front window and opened our recent presentation at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference with one as well. We even have t-shirts for sale!

Moon's South Pole Gets Close-Up in Restored Photos, space.com

"Newly restored photographs of the moon's dark south pole, taken by lunar orbiters in 1967, were released this week in anticipation of NASA's planned Thursday launch of two new probes that will investigate the region in search of underground ice."

More Photos From the Lunar Time Machine, Universe Today

"The LOIRP team is working on digitizing the data, and restoring the images to their full resolution. These images are especially timely, given the upcoming launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, hopefully this week. NASA can compare detailed high-resolution images from 1966 to the present and see what changes occurred in 40-plus years. "What this gives you is literally before and after photos," Cowing said."

Lunar Orbiter III-154-H2, Lunar Networks

"In fact, there is a lot of Cold War, personal and science history in this otherwise ordinary-looking shot of apparently unremarkable lunar landscape. The folks at Moonviews have now added their own and very welcome contribution."

LOIRP recovers Lunar Orbiter IV lunar south pole image from 1967, Lunar Networks

"For the third time in one week Moonviews, the Lunar Orbiter Image Restoration Project (LOIRP) has released another spectacular total restoration taken from multiple passes over magnetic tape retaining data downloaded directly during the U.S. Lunar Orbiter series (1966-1968)."

This image LO3-154-H was taken by Lunar Orbiter III on 20 February 1967 and shows the landing site for both Surveyor III (landed 20 April 1967) and Apollo 12 (landed 19 November 1969).

Figure 1 shows the region without labels. Figure 2 shows major features plus EVA routes.

This image has been recovered in its original high resolution format from original Lunar Orbiter project data tapes using restored tape drive hardware and will eventually be submitted to the PDS (Planetary Data System).

LOIRP Note: We will be putting the full resolution version of this image on the NASA Lunar Science Institute website with the layers preserved for Photoshop for all you folks to have fun with! We only ask that you send us copies of what you do and credit us if you publish it anywhere.

For more information on the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) visit http://www.moonviews.com

For information on NASA's Lunar Science Institute visit http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov/

This image was taken by Lunar Orbiter IV in May 1967 and shows the south pole of the Moon. Figure 1 shows the region without labels. Figure 2 shows major features plus notation regarding processing artifacts from the spacecraft's film processing system. The moon's south pole is located near the rim of Shackleton Crater.

Adjacent to the south pole is Shoemaker crater named in honor of famed planetary geologist Eugene Shoemaker. The Lunar Prospector spacecraft, carrying some of Shoemaker's ashes, was deliberately crashed in this crater in an attempt to see if any water ice would be thrown up by the impact.

The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will be targeted to impact at the south pole of the moon. As such, the moon's polar regions are of great interest right now.

This image has been recovered in its original high resolution format from original Lunar Orbiter project data tapes using restored tape drive hardware and will eventually be submitted to the PDS (Planetary Data System).

LOIRP Note: We will be putting the full resolution version of this image on the NASA Lunar Science Institute website with the layers preserved for Photoshop for all you folks to have fun with! We only ask that you send us copies of what you do and credit us if you publish it anywhere.

For more information on the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) visit http://www.moonviews.com

For information on NASA's Lunar Science Institute visit http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov/

This photo (Frame 133-H2) of the future Apollo 14 landing site was taken by Lunar Orbiter III on 20 February 1967 at an orbital altitude of 46.7 km. The resolution of the image is around 0.8 meters per pixel. The area covered by this image is 4.52167 x 5.77666 km.

Figure 1 shows the image unlabeled. In Figure 2 we have overlaid the EVA route upon this image so as to show where the crew set foot. While the crew were supposed to visit Cone crater they stopped 20 meters short of doing so due to some confusion as to their exact location. That said, they did visit some large rocks located adjacent to Cone crater's rim. The enlargement of this Lunar Orbiter image clearly shows some large rocks poised near the crater's rim. The inset photo shows the largest outcropping as photographed by the crew on the surface.

NOTE: We originally posted these files in an incorrect orientation. This was due to how the images originally show up when they are retrieved from the original tapes. Thanks to all of you eagle-eyed viewers we caught that. We have replaced those earlier files with ones that are correctly oriented to North, South, East, and West.

This image has been recovered in its original high resolution format from original Lunar Orbiter project data tapes using restored tape drive hardware and will eventually be submitted to the PDS (Planetary Data System). The full resolution is online here at NLSI.

LOIRP Note: We will be putting the full resolution version of this image on the NASA Lunar Science Institute website with the layers preserved for Photoshop for all you folks to have fun with! We only ask that you send us copies of what you do and credit us if you publish it anywhere.

For more information on the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) visit http://www.moonviews.com

For information on NASA's Lunar Science Institute visit http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov/

Related Links

Apollo 14 Surface Operations Overview

Apollo 14 Preliminary Science Report

Apollo 14 Mission Report

Apollo 14 Lunar Surface Journal

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The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) has released a newly-retrieved, high resolution image taken of the lunar surface 42 years ago.

This image was taken by Lunar Orbiter III (LPI data) in February 1967. This oblique photo shows the region around the crater Galilaei and Planitia Descensus in Oceanus Procellarum (the Sea of Storms). In the upper center of the image you can see the Great Wall of Procellarum.

This image has been recovered in its original high resolution format from original Lunar Orbiter project data tapes using restored tape drive hardware and will eventually be submitted to the PDS (Planetary Data System).

LOIRP Note: We will be putting the full resolution version of this image on the NASA Lunar Science Institute website with the layers preserved for Photoshop for all you folks to have fun with! We only ask that you send us copies of what you do and credit us if you publish it anywhere.

For more information on the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) visit http://www.moonviews.com

For information on NASA's Lunar Science Institute visit http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov/

Thursday 12 June 2009: noon: Come hear Dennis Wingo of the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) discuss their use of Mac OS X technology to save our Space Race heritage. LOIRP is retrieving, digitizing and publishing high-resolution pictures of the Moon captured by five NASA space probes ahead of the Apollo 11 moon landings in 1969. These tapes - rescued from destruction by a determined NASA archivist - represent some of the highest-resolution pictures ever taken of the Moon's surface and are a priceless piece of history.

More info at http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/sciencemedicine/

The Lunar Orbiter II-070-H image (Frame 70, High resolution) has a unique feature that is relevant to the LCROSS mission. This image shows the impact site of the Ranger 8 mission. This location was identified decades ago and is discussed in the NASA SP-168 online address. This location was also photographed during the Apollo 16 mission (NASA SP-315 page 29-46) but at a lower resolution of 3-5 meters. The image was taken from an altitude of 45.81 km. The resolution is about 0.4 meters per pixel. The crater from the Ranger impact is not well defined in the existing film database, especially as it appears at the boundary between two framelets.

Figure 1 is the reproduced trajectory of the Ranger 8 mission from NASA SP-168:

Figure 1: Ranger 8 Impact Trajectory Overlay on LOII-070-H (NASA SP-168). Image credit: LOIRP Click on image to enlarge

Figure 2 shows the detail of the projected impact point:

Figure 2: Ranger 8 Estimated Impact Point (Crater C1). Image credit: LOIRP. Click on image to enlarge

The scale of an entire framelet is ~200 meters. While the full framelet is not shown here, the ragged overlap between two framelets from the film version of the image has lead to a misleading conclusion regarding the size and the shape of the crater. Crater C1 was disputed as the location of the impact in another NASA document (SP-315). The Apollo 16 preliminary science report (SP-315) identifies crater C2 as the impact point of Ranger 8 because it is consistent with other craters photographed by the later Apollo missions. The central mound is a distinctive signature of these impacts. Figure 3 is a low resolution version of our updated image from the LOIRP scans. The full resolution image [2.9 GB tiff] can be downloaded here

Figure 3: LOIRP LOII-70-H Image (reduced resolution). Image credit: LOIRP. Click on image to enlarge

Figure 4 shows the enhanced detail available from the LOIRP analog data tapes. Since the contrast is muted due to the nature of the site, the dynamic range improvements are not as noticeable. In the digital domain the framelet edges can be repositioned to generate a super-resolution version of the image by scanning the tape multiple times. The central mound, which seems to be an indicator of these small craters (as discussed in NASA SP 315 for the SIV-B impacts) is clearly evident here. The dark surrounding ejecta blanket was not expected, which drove the early identification of crater C1 as the impact point. However, it is unclear if the light colored ejecta to the lower left is associated with crater C1 or C2.

Figure 4: Detail of LOII-070-H2-f-601-602. Image credit: LOIRP. Click on image to enlarge

From a science perspective we are able to discern the size of the crater to a precise number (12.5 meters), which can give the LCROSS team a ground truth for similarly sized spacecraft.

Posted by: Soderman/NLSI Staff Source: D. Wingo/ LOIRP

HONORING THE LUNAR ORBITER IMAGE RECOVERY PROJECT
HON. ZOE LOFGREN
OF CALIFORNIA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Monday, April 27, 2009

Ms. ZOE LOFGREN of California. Madam Speaker, I rise to commend the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project and all those who have contributed their time and effort to ensure that historic images and vital data from the Lunar Orbiter missions of the 1960s are not lost to future generations.

In 1965, Charles Byrne, an engineer with Bellcomm, Inc., had the foresight to propose that NASA record data from the Lunar Orbiter missions onto tape recorders. NASA agreed and the images returned from the Lunar Orbiters were backed up on AMPEX FR-900 tape drives. To date, these images are some of highest resolution images we have of the Moon. Those images include a high-resolution version of “Earthrise,” the first picture of the Earth from the Moon’s vantage point. Time Magazine has called this image “the photo of the century.” The tapes also contain the first stereo imagery of the Moon’s surface. Indeed, these are some of the best images of the Moon ever taken, far superior from those received from the Hubble telescope.

Old NASA Tapes Reveal Stunning New Moon Images; Resolution Unparalleled

KTVU looked at several images, and the detail and clarity are astonishing. It's the difference between grainy 35mm film with several generations of degradation, and the 70mm film original.

On shots of the lunar surface, the first versions show a blurry shadow here, some grayish along the horizon. The digitized recovered image is crisp with the deep black of space hovering over a multi-shaded gray surface, almost as if you were looking out the window of some lunar highrise. You can see rocks the size of an office chair. Sharp shadows and almost a 3D effect."

Full story and Video at KTVU

Old Moon Images Get Modern Makeover, Fox

Old Moon Images Get Modern Makeover, LiveScience

"Dennis Wingo, LOIRP's team leader, detailed the group's work in progress during last week's 40th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Teamed with SpaceRef.com, LOIRP's saga is one of acquiring the last surviving Ampex FR-900 machinery that can play analog image data from the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft. Wingo noted that the work is backed by NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, the space agency's Innovative Partnership Program, along with private organizations, making it possible to overhaul old equipment, digitally upgrade and clean-up the imagery via software. LOIRP is located at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. There, project members are taking the analog data, converting it into digital form and reconstructing the images. By moving them into the digital domain, Wingo said, the photos now offer a higher dynamic range and resolution than the original pictures, he added. "We're going to be releasing these to the whole world," Wingo said. Use of the refreshed images, contrasted to what NASA's upcoming Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission is slated to produce, has an immediate scientific benefit. That is, what is the frequency of impacts on the Moon's already substantially crater-pocked surface? "We'll be able to get crater counts," Wingo told SPACE.com. "LRO imagery of the same terrain imaged decades ago will provide a crater count over the last 40 years."

NASA's early lunar images, in a new light, Los Angeles Times

"Rising over the battered surface of the moon, Earth loomed in a shimmering arc covered in a swirling skin of clouds. The image, taken in 1966 by NASA's robotic probe Lunar Orbiter 1, presented a stunning juxtaposition of planet and moon that no earthling had ever seen before. It was dubbed the Picture of the Century. "The most beautiful thing I'd ever seen," remembered Keith Cowing, who saw it as an 11-year-old and credited it with eventually luring him to work for NASA. But in the mad rush of discovery, even the breathtaking can get mislaid. But in the mad rush of discovery, even the breathtaking can get mislaid. NASA was so preoccupied with getting an astronaut to the moon ahead of the Soviets that little attention was paid to the mountains of scientific data that flowed back to Earth from its early space missions. The data, stored on miles of fragile tapes, grew into mountains that were packed up and sent to a government warehouse with crates of other stuff. And so they eventually came to the attention of Nancy Evans, a no-nonsense woman with flaming red hair that fit her sometimes-impatient nature."

I am proud to announce that the LOIRP Image recovery project will be presenting a 3 minute video at the 2009 Santa Cruz Film Festival. This is a major northern California cultural event and probably the first time in 20 years that a space themed entry has been invited to present. This film festival is attended by thousands and the attendees represent the top tier of the cultural elite of the San Francisco and northern California, including the regents of the University of California system, political, and business leaders.

Website http://www.santacruzfilmfestival.org/

Our presentation will be themed "In Praise of Old Men", which will be a 3 minute video, beginning with the original Lunar Orbiter program in the 1960's and segueing to our image and video record of bringing the marvels of 1960's technology back to life with a focus on the retirees who have been instrumental in our efforts. It is a praise of this incredibly competent generation that took us to the Moon, and who even in their golden years, are an inspiration to the younger generation in their abilities.

The video will end with some of the marvelous pictures of the Moon that we are getting now, and ending with an incredible image of the black and white Earth, lonely in the backdrop of space, derived from Lunar Orbiter I and V images.

At the end we will auction off three high resolution prints as part of a Charity event at the festival and our intrepid Center Director, Dr. Pete Worden will participate with the head of the film festival in the auction.

This will be a great way to bring the 60's, the role of NASA in the popular culture of the era, and to honor the people who helped to make that a reality.

Dennis Wingo
LOIRP Project Lead

This video shows one of the tape drives retrieving a Lunar Orbiter II image on 24 February 2009. Video: LOIRP.

Detail of a high resolution (raw) Lunar Orbiter II framelet retrieved on 24 February 2009. Full framelet below (Click on image to enlarge.) Image LOIRP/NASA

Refurbished capstan motor. Copyright 2009 LOIRP reproduction or republication prohibited without prior written permission.

Ken and Nathan working on refurbished capstan motor. Copyright 2009 LOIRP reproduction or republication prohibited without prior written permission.

Ken working on refurbished capstan motor. Copyright 2009 LOIRP reproduction or republication prohibited without prior written permission.

To: LOIRP Status
From: Dennis Wingo
Subject: Progress Report, Milestone ALERT! Folks Major milestones to report!

Demodulator

We have had a major milestone accomplished (well 98% of the way there). Figure 1 shows two framelets, from Lunar Orbiter II High Resolution image (we don't know which one yet). Figure 2 shows our favorite image, the Lunar Orbiter 1 image of the Earth with two framelets that were captured from the undemodulated tape. The framelets that are stitched together are from LO-1-102.

This proves that we can demodulate random tapes from more than one Lunar Orbiter mission but it has also shown us what we have to do to get to full production mode. The demodulator must be ultra stable, however, the drive is still not to its original specification and so there is jitter in the signal. The new capstan motor should fix this as we have new belts, bearings, and the motor has been balanced back to its original specification. However, the the motor driver assembly that we built to use during the calibration process blew some power transistors and he had to come back down (he is in San Francisco) and pick up one of our spares. We have been building spares for the production process to keep the machines running and this is helping with the refurb process as well! We will have the capstan motor on Saturday and will install and align it on Monday.

Al Sturm is going back and doing some further refining of the demodulator design to account for some loss of demodulator lock on the signal found during the testing yesterday. This accounts for the striping that you see on the Lunar Orbiter II framelets that we captured and processed shown on the next pages. We have not found out what frame this is and it is possible (as I have looked through all of the LO-II images) that we have one that is not in the current database as one image is missing from the LPL database that may be ours. If this is true, then we are helping to fill out the complete LO image database for NASA. One final note, look at the final image and see the boulders sitting on the surface at the edge of the crater!

Software

Gordon Woodcock has done some test automated assemblies of a couple of framelets which looks like it will result in a workable and at least semi-automated process for framelet reassembly.

Second Machine

We are continuing to install new caps and refurbished subassemblies that Ken and I have modified for better operation. It is our plan to finish the motor replacements, upgrades, and testing on the primary machine to get it ready for production before finishing up the second drive. This is as our experience gained on the first drive and the design upgrades will make the second drive relatively easy to get going after the learning curve of working on the first machine.

Images

Figure 1 is an unknown high resolution image from Lunar Orbiter II. These are individual framelets and we are still searching to figure out which whole image that it is attached to. The lines through the images are artifacts from the demodulator that is not quite 100% working - yet. The image has boulders sitting on the surface quite easy to see. We have verified that the intrinsic resolution of these images is going to be very high, to be quantified further after we get the demod at 100% and the capstan motor replaced. Figure 2 is a composite from LO-I-102-H that we processed from the undemodulated tape.

Figure 1: Unidentified high resolution framelet from Lunar Orbiter II. Image LOIRP/NASA

Figure 2: composite from LO-I-102-H Larger image. Image LOIRP/NASA

Discussion

We are closing in on satisfying all of the milestones from this phase of our project and we are looking forward to getting the go ahead and funding to enter the production phase. It is our plan to take a series of new images with us to the Lunar and Planetary Science conference in Houston to show what can be done with data mining these old data sets. We expect to be able to digitize any tape at will by next week and have a set of images that are the high priority outputs. I am extremely proud of our team and what has been accomplished and look forward to providing this raw data and finished products for NASA's exploration and science efforts.

Respectfully Submitted

Dennis Ray Wingo

We are still making progress and this report will outline what has happened since the last report on January 20.

General Statement

A bit of context is necessary here. The first machine continues to perform well. There are problems that were anticipated that we are dealing with. One of the overall reliability issues is that many electronic parts in the machine are customer Ampex hybrid circuits that are obviously not available anymore. Figure 1 shows what we have done to overcome this:

Figure 1: Capstan Motor Driver Assembly Before (left) and After (right) Modifications. Copyright 2009 LOIRP reproduction or republication prohibited without prior written permission.

At the start of a new year, here is a new formal report. A lot has happened since late December.

Funding

We finally got the funding in place and to us around the 17th of December that allowed us to pay vendors that were working with us on many parts. Their status as of today is as follows:

Heads

I just visited Video Magnetics in Colorado Springs, CO last week on another trip and they have made good progress. Here in figure 1 is a nice picture of Edwardo Lailao, the last guy in the world that still knows how to refurbish these heads:

Figure 1: Edwardo Lailao, VMI Rotating Head Engineering Lead

No Silver Bullet: Archive Challenges, Permabits and Petabytes

"Even worse, going beyond 5 years exceeds the functional life of media or recording technology, and maintaining physical readability becomes increasingly difficult. I'd be wiling to bet that a number of my readers have boxes of QIC-80 tapes in the garage or basement with old data on them. Even if the tapes have a 50 year lifespan, do you have any ideas on where to get a working QIC-80 tape drive? NASA just recently went through an amazing project to recover old Lunar Orbiter image data, involving finding, refurbishing and interfacing with 40-year-old Ampex tape drives, an enormous project covering more than a decade to complete. Media life isn't the problem with long-term data storage, and "archival-grade" media isn't going to solve your physical readability problems, because the reader hardware will never last as long as the media."

Lunar Photo of the Day

"With much fanfare NASA has re-released the earliest US image of the Earth as seen from the Moon. This Orbiter 1 image was originally released in 1966 when it was a unique, never before seen view that dramatically documented our new prowess in space. The recent re-release follows a long saga of saving and repairing the large 40 year old tape drives needed to read the massive tapes that record the data."

Earthrise 1966, NASA Earth Observatory

"Long before man journeyed to the moon and looked back at the tiny, fragile planet that houses humanity, remote orbiters were sending back pictures of home. Sent to scope out potential landing sites on the Moon, the series of five Lunar Orbiters also sent back the earliest views of Earth from another celestial body. This image, taken in 1966 by Lunar Orbiter 1, is among the first views of Earth from the Moon. In the black-and-white image, a crescent Earth floats majestically behind the lumpy surface of the Moon. Though clouds swirl across the atmosphere, hiding nearly all identifying features on the surface beneath, the western edge of Africa is faintly visible in the upper left. The Earth's North Pole points toward the top of the image."

Moon photo goes high-def, Leader Post

"A little over 40 years ago, to help it select potential landing sites for its Apollo lunar missions, NASA sent five unmanned spacecraft over two years to orbit the moon and photograph pretty much every inch of its surface."

NASA restores 42-yr-old image of Earth rising above the lunar surface, Entertainment and Showbiz

"The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, located at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California, is taking analog data from original recorders used to store on tape and 1,500 of the original tapes, converting the data into digital form, and reconstructing the images."

Revised Wikipedia entry on Lunar Orbiter

"In 2007, the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) began a process to convert the Lunar Orbiter Images directly from the original analog video recordings of the spacecraft data to digital image format, a change which provided vastly improved resolution over the original images released in the 1960s. The first of these restored images were released in late 2008."

This video features a press Conference held at NASA Ames Research Center on 13 November 2008 where our first recovered Lunar Orbiter image was unveiled and discussed.

The Moon View, editorial, New York Times

"Last week, NASA released a newly restored image of a younger Earth. It was taken from Lunar Orbiter 1 in 1966, the first of several orbiters that helped gather data for the first moon landing in 1969. The photograph shows Earth just cresting the Moon’s curving horizon, the first picture of our planet framed by the surface of the Moon. When the photograph was published, in 1966, it looked like a newsprint version of a high-contrast snapshot from space, a stark scattering of whites and blacks. The data from the lunar orbiter was stored on old analog tape drives. Now, imaging experts at NASA have digitized those drives — mining data that could not be recovered when they were first made — and produced a high-resolution version of that historic photograph."

The Earth As First Seen From The Moon, Editorial Photographer

"When I was young and the first photographs from our space missions began to appear, I was fasinated by their mystery and grace. Science fiction was one of my passions then. When the Whole Earth Catalog began to publish the used this imagery to capture out attention and it is really our generation that had been the first to witness such sights."

Restored for posterity: The historic moment Earth was pictured from space for the first time, Daily Mail

"Later, clearer images would continue to inspire mankind, bringing back more and more images of Earth from space, but this is the one which captures the very second humanity gazed down on itself for the first time. And the image, showing the start of man's achievements in space, was followed less than a fortnight later by a vision of man's dreams for the future - when the first episode of Star Trek aired on September 8."

This is why I get a kick out of archiving!, Serendipityoucity

"These lunar images and the later great blue ball images sparked a whole new way for us to see ourselves, to think of a borderless world, to imagine ourselves in space, to think about transboudary environmental issues, and most importantly reminded us that we are all in this together."

Stuff on the Web: NASA goes back to the future, 4P Photoblog

"That NASA is restoring these images makes a lot of sense to me. They should contain quite a bit of information that will be crucial to the current Lunar program. The quality of the images though looks to be astonishing, and is a credit to the original designers of the Lunar Orbiters."

Endeavour Update; Low Power Plan For Spirit, Astronomy Weather Blog, AccuWeather.com

"I have a profound interest in photography, so when I read about how NASA had restored a 42-year old image, I had to share the story! There is a great picture that was taken by the Lunar Orbiter 1 in 1966 that depicts Earth rising above the lunar surface. Modern digital technology has allowed NASA to produce the image at much higher resolutions. In the 1960s, limited technology of the day prevented the full, true resolution of the images from being available as they were captured on large magnetic types and transferred to photographic film."

Restored: First Image of the Earth from the Moon:

"Explanation: Pictured above is the first image ever taken of the Earth from the Moon. The image was taken in 1966 by Lunar Orbiter 1 and heralded by then-journalists as the Image of the Century. It was taken about two years before the Apollo 8 crew snapped its more famous color cousin. Recently, modern technology has allowed the recovery of higher resolution images from old data sources such as Lunar Orbiter tapes than ever before. Specifically, recovery of the above image was initiated 20 years ago by Nancy Evans, and completed recently by Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing who lead the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project. Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project. Images like that above carry more than aesthetic value -- comparison to recent high definition images of the Moon enables investigations into how the Moon has been changing."

Note: The LOIRP segment starts at 2:14

Colorized wallpaper via Gizmodo

iPhone background version via Gizmodo

NASA Scales Up 1966's Moon Image to Amazing Ultra-High Resolution, Gizmodo

"When NASA released this image from their Lunar Orbiter 1 back in 1966, the first photograph ever of the Earth rising above the Moon's surface, it was low resolution but they still amazed the world. This week, they have surprised every space aficionado re-releasing the same image in ultra-high definition. The cool part now is that NASA hasn't used any upscaling or magical infinite zoom-in filter from CSI. Instead, they have created a new technology that uses refurbished analog machines and a new digital process that fully extracts the information stored in the program's old magnetic tapes, something that was impossible to do in the 60s. Click on the image to watch it in its 3673 x 1740 pixel glory."

Repaired data drives restoring the Moon, Collectspace

"Still, it took some experimentation to understand how the data was organized and what was on the tape. "It was not unlike the scene from the movie 'Contact' where they think they have a video signal but they are not sure and they sort of monkey with the gear and they plug things in and they say, 'Hey look! That's a video signal'. As they play with it further they suddenly say, 'Oh look, maybe we rotate it that way, flip the contrast,' and they eventually find out they've got a video signal and they're sitting there and playing with it and 'Look, more data!' and that's how it happened," described Cowing."

Odyssey Moon Collaborates with NASA Funded Team Recovering Never Seen Before Detailed Images of the Moon

"In support of the project Odyssey Moon supported the salary of an intern who provided direct support to the project's refurbishment of the original data tape drives. Odyssey Moon has also provided funding to the team to allow specific areas of the publicly released imagery to be enhanced for use in mission planning."

Restoring the Moon: Lunar Orbiter Images Recovered, space.com

"Anyone who has used a copy machine to make a copy of a copy knows that resolution is lost in the process. The same was true for Lunar Orbiter, though for NASA, which needed quicker access to the data than computers of that day were able to provide, the resulting images would be what they needed to evaluate landing locations for Apollo."

NASA restores 42-yr-old image of Earth rising above the lunar surface, Smash Hits, India
NASA goes back in time, IT Examiner, India
NASA releases digital version of iconic Earth image at Moffett Field, The Salinas Californian
NASA and LOIRP Return to the Moon, 42 Years Later. Recovering Lunar Orbiter Images, EDN
New views of the Moon - November 14, 2008, Nature

NASA unveils lunar image recovery project, CNet

"This project is an opportunity to revel in what was done in the past," said Pete Worden, director of Ames Research Center, "and get excited about what we're doing in the future."

NASA swoons over rescued moons; decades-old lunar photos no longer lost in space, AP

"These photos will have some use, said Wingo's partner, Keith Cowing, head of Spaceref Interactive, which runs space-themed Web sites. When NASA launches its next high-tech lunar probe in the spring, the space agency can compare detailed high-resolution images from 1966 to 2009 and see what changes occurred in 43 years, he said. "What this gives you is literally before and after photos," Cowing said. "This is like a time machine."

Rescued Moon Photos Restored to Unprecedented Detail, Universe Today

"Earlier this week we had a story about old data from the Apollo missions that could potentially be lost if an "antique" computer from the 1960's can't be renovated. But now comes good news about more old data which has actually been restored and enhanced to an exceedingly high quality."

New pictures of the moon discovered (video), KGO

"It's maybe the last place you might expect to resurrect history. There is an abandoned McDonalds near Moffett Field, with plenty of floor space for 1,894 video tapes. "We liken it to archeology. Techno-archeology," said Dennis Wingo, an imaging expert."

This video shows a Lunar Orbiter image framelet being retrieved from an original data tape using a restored FR-900 tape drive. Watch the monitor between the two tape drives as portions of the image (negative image) roll across the screen. This activity is part of the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) underway at NASA ARC.

Newly restored Lunar Orbiter 1 image. Originally taken on 23 August 1966 and restored by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project at NASA Ames Research Center. Center portion containing Earth has undergone a second level of processing to remove frame lines from the image. Larger image. Credit: NASA/LOIRP

Video: Equipment used to restore images.

Portion of newly restored Lunar Orbiter 1 image. Originally taken on 23 August 1966 and restored by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project at NASA Ames Research Center. Larger image. Credit: NASA/LOIRP

This graphic compares the enhanced resolution of the LOIRP image and the highest resolution image available online at LPI. AT full resolution shadows can be seem between clouds and the Earth's surface at a resolution estimated to be around 1 kilometer per pixel. This image was taken on 23 August 1966 and restored by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project at NASA Ames Research Center. Larger image. Credit: NASA/LOIRP

Several years ago the USGS Astrogeology Research Program began a project whereby copies of original Lunar Orbiter photos have been scanned using high resolution scanning devices. This graphic compares the calibration marks from a high resolution USGS scan and an inital image generated by the LOIRP. Larger image. Credit: NASA/USGS/LOIRP

This graphic compares the enhanced resolution of the LOIRP image and the highest resolution image available online at LPI. This image was taken on 23 August 1966 and restored by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project at NASA Ames Research Center. Larger image. Credit: NASA/LOIRP

Image below: The FR-900 drives in Nancy Evan's garage - the first time we saw them in February 2007. Copyright Credit: MOONVIEWS.COM. Reproduction prohibited without obtaining prior permission.

More images below

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. - NASA will hold a media briefing at 3 p.m. PST on Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008, to unveil a newly restored historic image from the early days of lunar exploration and discuss the innovative processing technique used to retrieve the image.

The briefing will take place in the Ames Research Center auditorium, Bldg. N-201. NASA officials will be available to discuss the recovery process and the scientific value of the iconic images to the next generation of explorers as NASA plans to return to the moon. A tour of the restoration facility will be offered following the briefing.

Briefing participants are:

- S. Pete Worden, Ames Research Center Director
- Greg Schmidt, Deputy Director, NASA Lunar Science Institute, NASA Ames
- Dennis Wingo, Image Recovery Project Lead, Huntsville, Ala.
- Charles J. Byrne, Lunar Image Expert, Middletown, N.J.

For news media representatives unable to attend, a roundtable discussion will be held following the briefing. Reporters wanting to participate must call Mike Mewhinney at 650-604-3937 by Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2008.

Driving Directions: To reach NASA Ames, take the Moffett Field/NASA Parkway exit off U.S. 101 and drive east on Moffett Boulevard towards the main gate. At the main gate, pull into the small parking lot on your right and enter the Visitor Badge Office to obtain a visitor pass. The auditorium is located directly behind the administration building as you enter the center.

For more information about NASA Ames Research Center, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ames

For information regarding the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) contact:

Keith Cowing
kcowing@spaceref.com
703-787-6567

'Digital Dark Age' may doom some data

10/27/08

Phil Ciciora, News Editor
217-333-2177;pciciora@illinois.edu

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- What stands a better chance of surviving 50 years from now, a framed photograph or a 10-megabyte digital photo file on your computer's hard drive?

The framed photograph will inevitably fade and yellow over time, but the digital photo file may be unreadable to future computers - an unintended consequence of our rapidly digitizing world that may ultimately lead to a "digital dark age," says Jerome P. McDonough, assistant professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

According to McDonough, the issue of a looming digital dark age originates from the mass of data spawned by our ever-growing information economy - at last count, 369 exabytes worth of data, including electronic records, tax files, e-mail, music and photos, for starters. (An exabyte is 1 quintillion bytes; a quintillion is the number 1 followed by 18 zeroes.)

The concern for archivists and information scientists like McDonough is that, with ever-shifting platforms and file formats, much of the data we produce today could eventually fall into a black hole of inaccessibility.

"If we can't keep today's information alive for future generations," McDonough said, "we will lose a lot of our culture."

Contrary to popular belief, electronic data has proven to be much more ephemeral than books, journals or pieces of plastic art. After all, when was the last time you opened a WordPerfect file or tried to read an 8-inch floppy disk?

"Even over the course of 10 years, you can have a rapid enough evolution in the ways people store digital information and the programs they use to access it that file formats can fall out of date," McDonough said.

Magnetic tape, which stores most of the world's computer backups, can degrade within a decade. According to the National Archives Web site by the mid-1970s, only two machines could read the data from the 1960 U.S. Census: One was in Japan, the other in the Smithsonian Institution. Some of the data collected from NASA's 1976 Viking landing on Mars is unreadable and lost forever.

From a cultural perspective, McDonough said there's a "huge amount" of content that's only being developed or is available in a digital-only format.

"E-mail is a classic example of that," he said. "It runs both the modern business world and government. If that information is lost, you've lost the archive of what has actually happened in the modern world. We've seen a couple of examples of this so far."

McDonough cited the missing White House e-mail archive from the run-up to the Iraq War, a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

"With the current state of the technology, data is vulnerable to both accidental and deliberate erasure," he said. "What we would like to see is an environment where we can make sure that data does not die due to accidents, malicious intent or even benign neglect."

McDonough also cited Barack Obama's political advertising inside the latest editions of the popular videogames "Burnout Paradise" and "NBA Live" as an example of something that ought to be preserved for future generations but could possibly be lost because of the proprietary nature of videogames and videogame platforms.

"It's not a matter of just preserving the game itself. There are whole parts of popular and political culture that we won't be able to preserve if we can't preserve what's going on inside the gaming world."

McDonough believes there would also be an economic effect to the loss of data from a digital dark age.

"We would essentially be burning money because we would lose the huge economic investment libraries and archives have made digitizing materials to make them accessible," he said. "Governments are likewise investing huge sums to make documents available to the public in electronic form."

To avoid a digital dark age, McDonough says that we need to figure out the best way to keep valuable data alive and accessible by using a multi-prong approach of migrating data to new formats, devising methods of getting old software to work on existing platforms, using open-source file formats and software, and creating data that's "media-independent."

"Reliance on open standards is certainly a huge part, but it's not the only part," he said. "If we want information to survive, we really need to avoid formats that depend on a particular media type. Commercial DVDs that employ protection schemes make it impossible for libraries to legally transfer the content to new media. When the old media dies, the information dies with it."

Enthusiasm for switching from proprietary software such as Microsoft's Office suite to open-source software such as OpenOffice has only recently begun to gather momentum outside of information technology circles.

"Software companies have seen the benefits of locking people into a platform and have been very resistant to change," McDonough said. "Now we are actually starting to see some market mandates in the open direction."

McDonough cites Brazil, the Netherlands and Norway as examples of countries that have mandated the use of non-proprietary file formats for government business.

"There has been quite a movement, particularly among governments, to say: 'We're not going to buy software that uses proprietary file formats exclusively. You're going to have to provide an open format so we can escape from the platform,' " he said. "With that market demand, you really did see some more pressure on vendors to move to something open."

Editor's note: To contact Jerome McDonough, call 217-244-5916; e-mail jmcdonou@illinois.edu

NASA SP-168 EXPLORING SPACE WITH A CAMERA

ORBITER I

Describing the spectacular, historic view above, FLOYD L. THOMPSON, then Director, Langley Research Center, wrote: "At 16:35 GMT on August 23, 1966, the versatile manmade Lunar Orbiter spacecraft responded to a series of commands sent to it from Earth, across a quarter-million miles of space, and made this over-the-shoulder view of its home planet from a vantage point 730 miles above the far side of the Moon.

"At that moment," Thompson continued, "the Sun was setting along an arc extending from England [on the right] to Antarctica [on the left]. Above that line, the world, with the east coast of the United States at the top, was still bathed in afternoon sunlight. Below, the major portion of the African Continent and the Indian Ocean were shrouded in the darkness of evening. "By this reversal of viewpoint, we here on the...

... and an Oblique View of the Moon Itself

....Earth have been provided a sobering glimpse of the spectacle of our own planet as it will be seen by a few of our generation in their pursuit of the manned exploration of space. We have achieved the ability to contemplate ourselves from afar and thus, in a measure, accomplish the wish expressed by Robert Burns: 'To see oursels as ithers see us! "

Also visible in dramatic new perspective in this photograph is the singularly bleak Iunar landscape, its tortured features evidently hammered out by a cosmic bombardment that may have extended over billions of years.

Because the airless, weatherless Moon appears to preserve its surface materials so well, it may serve science as an illuminating record of past events in the solar system. ROBERT JASTROW, Director Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has called the Moon "the Rosetta Stone of the planets."

Destination Moon: A History of the Lunar Orbiter Program, NASA TM X-3487

Of all the pictures which Lunar Orbiter I made, one of the most spectacular was the first photograph of the Earth taken from the vicinity of the Moon. This picture was not included in the original mission plan, and it required that the spacecraft's attitude in relation to the lunar surface be changed so that the camera's lenses were pointing away from the Moon. Such maneuvering meant a calculated risk and, coming early in the flight, the unplanned photograph of Earth raised some doubts among Boeing management about the safety of the spacecraft.

Robert J. Helberg, Boeing's Program Manager for Lunar Orbiter, opposed such a hazardous unnecessary risk. The spacecraft would be pointed away from the Moon so that [242] the camera's lenses could catch a quick view of Earth tangential to the lunar surface. Then, once the pictures were made (flight controllers would execute two photo sequences on two different orbits), Lunar Orbiter I would disappear behind the Moon where it would not be in communication with ground control. If, for some reason ground control failed to reestablish communications with it, the Apollo-oriented mission photography would probably remain undone, Moreover, Boeing had an incentive riding on the performance of the spacecraft, and Heiberg did not think it prudent to commit the spacecraft to a series of maneuvers for which no plans had been made. 30

The understandably conservative Boeing stance was changed through a series of meetings between top NASA program officials, including Dr. Floyd L. Thompson, Clifford H. Nelson, and Lee R. Scherer. They convinced Heiberg that the picture was worth the risk and that NASA would make compensation in the event of an unexpected mishap with the spacecraft. After agreement had been reached, Lunar Orbiter flight controllers executed the necessary maneuvers to point the spacecraft's camera away from the lunar surface, and on two different orbits (16 and 26) it recorded two unprecedented, very useful photographs.

[243] The Earth-Moon pictures proved valuable for their oblique perspective of the lunar surface. Until these two photographs, all pictures had been taken along axes perpendicular or nearly perpendicular to the Moon's surface. On subsequent Lunar Orbiter missions oblique photography was planned and used more often. 31

30. Taback interview. See also Transcript of Proceedings--Discussion between Nicks, et al., and members of National Academy of Public Administration, pp. 111-112.

31. For a detailed technical description of the Earth-Moon photographs refer to Lunar Orbiter I Photography, NASA CR-847, prepared by Boeing Company, Seattle, Washington, for the Langley Research Center, August 1967, pp. 64-71.

The Orbital Period for LO-1 was 3 hrs 26 minutes and 21 seconds - that's 34.3 hours between orbit 16 and 26 .... you could have had orbit 16 on 23 Aug and orbit 26 on 25 Aug ...

1. If you listen to this audio [ http://images.spaceref.com/news/2008/loirptest5.mp3] from a data tape you will hear the technician state that it is an analog copy of an earlier tape - but that it is only a copy of the portion with the Earth and moon on it and that it was originally recorded on GMT date 237.

2. In 1966 day 237 was 25 August. Lunar Orbiter 1 was launched on 10 August 1966 and imaged the moon from 18-29 August 1966.

So, NASA NSSDC says that this image was taken on 23 August yet the tech's voice says day 237 - this must be the date when the tape was being played back from the spacecraft to Earth, yes

Keith Cowing: Here is the document that shows that there is a SECOND demodulator system and even outlines how the data is written to the tape drives.

The Lunar Orbiter Telecommunications System, NASA LaRC, 1965

The first image you see here is the explanation from the original documentation showing what a single line of lunar orbiter video looks like.  The second, is the machine fully locked up and reproducing the correct structure.  The image is inverted as it gets flipped with a jumper select on the board that we just have another board that has the jumper but we weren't using it.

If you look at the oscilloscope, you can see the fiducial marks in their proper position before and after the sync pulse.  If you look at the lower right part of the screen, you will see the notation (200us).  That is the amount of time per division.  If you count the divisions to the next sync pulse, you will see that it exactly matches the number for a single scan line below.  The voltage scale is correct as well except that the drawing below is wrong.  The signal is 1 volt, not five volts.  We have confirmation that 1 volt is the correct number from the audio tapes where the engineers recorded the voltage levels on the tape.  It is these kinds of discrepancies that we have had to research and overcome.  We have reached that magic milestone.  We now have to put those lines together into an image and we are working that now.  However, the two critical questions that were in everyones mind when we started this have been answered.  Are the tapes good?  Yes.  Can the drive be brought back to operational status? Yes.  

We are at a crossroads here and I will put together a formal report and seek input on where to go from here.  As a result of our work we have found a few things that were not in the documentation that effects which way we go forward from here.  Our original plan for digitizing the images is no longer tenable and we are doing a near term work around for the image milestone.

Keith Cowing: This is part of the detective work I used to help narrow down what image we may have found.

1. If you listen to this audio [ http://images.spaceref.com/news/2008/loirptest5.mp3] from a data tape you will hear the technician state that it is an analog copy of an earlier tape - but that it is only a copy of the portion with the Earth and moon on it and that it was originally recorded on GMT date 237.

2. In 1966 day 237 was 25 August. Lunar Orbiter 1 was launched on 10 August 1966 and imaged the moon from 18-29 August 1966.

3. This image of a page from a Lunar Orbiter planning document [ page 70 of Lunar Orbiter I - Photography NASA-CR-847 http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19670023005] clearly shows an image of the Earth from the moon being planed for Lunar Orbiter 1 on day 237.

http://images.spaceref.com/news/2008/day237.earth.moon.jpg

4. Apparently this was attempted more than once. Recall that Lunar Orbiter 1 was the first mission and they had a lot of bugs to work out with the imaging system.

5. According to http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/lo1_h102_123.html Lunar Orbiter 1 took the first two remote images of earth from the distance of the Moon, August 23rd 1966."

6. This is the series of three images stitched togetehr showing Earthrise above the lunar surface taken on 23 August 1966

http://images.spaceref.com/news/2008/lo1_h102_123.gif

Location & Time Information
Date/Time (UT): 1966-08-23 T 16:36:23
Distance/Range (km): 1476
Central Latitude/Longitude (deg): -14.68/104.34
Orbit(s): N/A

Imaging Information
Area or Feature Type: crater, global view
Instrument:  High-resolution Camera
Instrument Resolution (pixels): N/A
Instrument Field of View (deg): 20.4 x 5.16 
Filter: Clear
Illumination Incidence Angle (deg): 21.30
Phase Angle (deg): 95.07
Instrument Look Direction: N/A
Surface Emission Angle (deg): 80.94

Ordering Information
CD-ROM Volume: N/A
NASA Image ID number: L01-102; H1, H2, H3
Other Image ID number: N/A
NSSDC Data Set ID (Photo): 66-073Z-01D
NSSDC Data Set ID (CD): N/A
Other ID: N/A

7. Apparently there was some controversy about doing things like this with the spacecraft:

"Despite the malfunctions in the photographic subsystem the spacecraft succeeded in taking many historic pictures. Command and maneuver requirements were developed to take, [241] in near real-time, such pictures as those of the morning and evening terminator on the lunar surface, the Earth as seen from the Moon's vicinity, numerous farside pictures, and additional photographs of sites of interest on the near side. Lunar Orbiter I photographed such areas as potential targets for Mission B, major craters, and mare and upland areas useful as Apollo navigation landmarks and was mostly able to satisfy the requirements to take these photographs.

Of all the pictures which Lunar Orbiter I made, one of the most spectacular was the first photograph of the Earth taken from the vicinity of the Moon. This picture was not included in the original mission plan, and it required that the spacecraft's attitude in relation to the lunar surface be changed so that the camera's lenses were pointing away from the Moon. Such maneuvering meant a calculated risk and, coming early in the flight, the unplanned photograph of Earth raised some doubts among Boeing management about the safety of the spacecraft.

Robert J. Helberg, Boeing's Program Manager for Lunar Orbiter, opposed such a hazardous unnecessary risk. The spacecraft would be pointed away from the Moon so that [242] the camera's lenses could catch a quick view of Earth tangential to the lunar surface. Then, once the pictures were made (flight controllers would execute two photo sequences on two different orbits), Lunar Orbiter I would disappear behind the Moon where it would not be in communication with ground control. If, for some reason ground control failed to reestablish communications with it, the Apollo-oriented mission photography would probably remain undone, Moreover, Boeing had an incentive riding on the performance of the spacecraft, and Heiberg did not think it prudent to commit the spacecraft to a series of maneuvers for which no plans had been made.30

The understandably conservative Boeing stance was changed through a series of meetings between top NASA program officials, including Dr. Floyd L. Thompson, Clifford H. Nelson, and Lee R. Scherer. They convinced Heiberg that the picture was worth the risk and that NASA would make compensation in the event of an unexpected mishap with the spacecraft. After agreement had been reached, Lunar Orbiter flight controllers executed the necessary maneuvers to point the spacecraft's camera away from the lunar surface, and on two different orbits (16 and 26) it recorded two unprecedented, very useful photographs.

[243] The Earth-Moon pictures proved valuable for their oblique perspective of the lunar surface. Until these two photographs, all pictures had been taken along axes perpendicular or nearly perpendicular to the Moon's surface. On subsequent Lunar Orbiter missions oblique photography was planned and used more often.31"

8. We know that we have an image on this particular tape.

Keith Cowing: We have a milestone to report tonight. We put a real LO-II tape on the drive with the known good head and was able to get audio and the test video patterns off the machine. We did not dare go far enough yet to get the LO image but here for your listening pleasure and verification of milestone, is a voice that has not been heard since November 30, 1966. Sorry but if you have a PC you may not be able to hear it but on the Mac it is great! [Audio file] Also a pic to go along with it.

We are closing in on the prize.

[Audio files of voice track: PC (.wav) Mac

"30 November 1966"

Here is a MP3 version (thanks Ken!)

A lot of mundane yet important milestones.

Dennis Wingo: We have now confirmed that the timing system on the drive for the servos and just about everything else, is back into original specifications. We found in one of the manuals that we have, the procedures for aligning the various systems of the drive. Though the other three FR-901/902's are a little different, it is close enough that we now have verified this most critical system. We tested and confirmed that the oven controlled temperature stable clock reference (two out of three that we have tried) is within 6 x 10-8 Hertz, or better than one part in one million. This was a critical thing to find as if the system clock standards had been out of tolerance (after tweaking and 24 hour test), we would have had to have found an alternate means of providing a stable signal to the machine(s).

Fortunately as we were concerned about the possibility, we asked the ever intrepid Mark Newfield if he knew were a ultrastable 1 Mhz oscillator might be found. After a search with Ken Zin, one was located, from about the same era as the drives! We brought it over and it is hooked up and up to temperature and operating fine as a backup to the in machine standard.

Ken went through all of the rest of the timing system, and after replacing a bunch of transistors, the entire timing chain is within specification. This has had a beneficial effect on the servo system and even with the known bad bearings the servos that control the reel motors are within specification for testing at least. We still have out the reel motors and the capstan motor for bearing refurbishing. We have found more documentation in the manuals with details about the mechanical specifications of the servo system and its motors. We are anxiously awaiting the aperture cards that we are getting copied to see what other documentation that we now have from the former Ampex head of field engineering.

We have been digging into the software issues associated with the data acquisition card. At this time I can get it to digitize at 1.8 million samples per second, not good but better than before. It is going to take a lot of digging into and creating our custom software for the data acquisition and storage task. I am still looking at an alternative that I may pull the trigger on this week.

We have reorganized the work space and created an area for the computer that will be connected to the drive to reside, close enough for the hook up. With all the work that we have done and with this much verified, and knowing that the likelyhood of a tape being damaged was nil, we put a Lunar Orbiter tape on the drive Friday. There is a very good reason for this even before the system is fully back within operating specifications. The reason is that the servo system needs a tape with a 500 kHz pilot tone on it to come fully into lock. To make a new one means that the record and playback system has to be fully back into specification, which it is not as of yet.

So we took a LO tape and put it on the drive to examine the test data at the front of the LO tapes. With this we can get the best idea of how far we have to go (a ways still) before the drive is 100% back into its original specification. We will get back our rollers for the tapes this week. We can mount them and get the mechanics of the system fully back within original specification. The Capstan and Reel motors are still being worked on.

When we put the tape on, we did get video but the head that we were using is not the best one. There are still some problems in the time base corrector (for the tape, not the servo system) and other electronics but we have actually read multiburst off the oscilliscope (this does not mean that the demodulator is the correct one) from the tape. Pictures to follow and the video will be up on the facebook page in the morning.

We are also sad this week to lose our two students from San Jose state (Kenneth Willians and Austin Epps) this week as the fall term is restarting. They will be here part time (20 hours a week) to help out but their dedication and hard work this summer has really helped us with doing all the things we have had to do to make the progress that we have. Good job gentlemen! I am getting both Austin and Kenneth to talk to their professors about getting elective credit for working on the project. We did over 300 hours of this on my SEDSAT project at UAH for undergrads and would like to have the students do this here as well. I would posit at least one graduate level degree could come from this project as well, so we look forward to getting images soon!

We have also been monitoring the progress to get the $50k from Doug Comstock obligated and to get the head refurbishment going. We have found out that VMI has just had a big order come in so we might be a bit slow in getting our head back. Will know more this week

Dennis Wingo: A bit delayed but we had a lot happen over the past few days, not all of it good.

We have had a bit of a setback. We have received our interim computer from Apple and it is almost the same as the final one, which alerted us to the problem, which is that the I/O bus is incompatible with the National Instruments data acquisition card that we have purchased, even though their website said it was supported. I should have looked closer and verified this. We can get a replacement card that will work but since the hardware is being shipped from Hungary, it would cause a 5-10 business day delay. This is unacceptable at this point so Austin Epps, one of our engineering students found a work around with a PCI-Express to PCI adapter (the new bus to the old bus architecture) so we have purchased this and I am putting him on a plane to San Diego to pick it up and bring it back. This is cheaper than it seems as the price for expediting this is $150 dollars shipping and handling and having him fly down there is only twice that and saves two days. So, this evening we will be able to put the new computer and the data acquisition card together. Kenneth Williams is loading the software on the computer today.

On the good news front, $50k of additional funding has been provided through Doug Comstock from the NASA IPP. This money will be used to pay for the tooling to refurbish our heads (which are somewhat different than the standard commercial heads) and to get a single head completely refurbished. To save money we are doing all of the pre-refurbish work ourselves here as the first thing that the company that is doing the refurb did when contacted, was to call Kenneth Zin, our technical lead for help!

However, this $50k brings its challenges. The head refurbishing company demands a check for 2/3rds of the cost of the tooling to begin work. Due to the way that NASA procurement works, this means that we would have a 30 day delay before being able to move forward with the head refurb. This is unacceptable to me so I made a command decision to cancel the purchase of the high end MacIntosh computer and we will keep the existing interim computer and do the initial image processing with it.

This is an easy decision to make, which saves us $10k of expenditure that we can use to pay the head refurb company right away and get reimbursed when the NASA money comes in for this task. Our image processing may happen slower but since our goal at this time is only a few images, this is not a big sacrifice. It will be ok for our other image processing as well for now. We can order the new computer after we are successful in getting our images and moving into production (should funding become available). The interim computer can then become the secondary computer to run the second drive. The head refurb is by far the highest priority

We have made a lot of progress on the machine as well this past week.

We have started the process of refurbishing the mechanical systems of the primary drive. Since the mechanics are exactly the same for all four machines, we disassembled the parts donor drives for their tape guides (pictures enclosed), capstan motor, and the reel motors. All of the bearings are 40 years old and have to be replaced. We can't do this ourselves so we took them to a house in San Francisco that does this type of work as they have the tooling to do so. We took some of the simpler parts, along with some bearings that Kenneth Zin already had, to a place in South San Jose to be replaced and we will have those back this week and placed on the machine. Since there is setup time and charges to be considered here we have taken the step of taking two sets of all of the mechanical hardware to be done at once. One will be spares and if we are funded to go forward we will just put the spare hardware on the second machine. It is critical to get the mechanics properly aligned so that the tape transport system is back to the original specifications.

We have also shipped out additional rubber parts to redco in Nevada for refurbishing/replacement. One of these is easy, as it is the rubber pads on the tape reel assemblies that the tapes rest against. The second is not so easy, as we have to get the rubber interior surface of a seamless nylon set of belts that run the motors refurbished. We sent the belts off of the parts donor machines to get them refurbed first and then when we put the new stuff on, we will send the other belts to be refurbed. This is a major concern but doable as these belts are also critical to the proper operation of the entire servo mechanical system.

We have also had success the past week (after Fedex ground's inability to find our building for four days) in obtaining a lot of schematics and technical data for the FR-900 drives. This came from a labyrinth of contacts that led us finally to the retired head of Ampex's field engineering force! He happens to have most of the information that we need on the drives in terms of schematics, parts lists, and other details. We are still missing some procedures but we are much closer to having everything that we need and worst case we can get the drive completely back to specifications with what we have. This is truly an adventure in technoarcheology in finding this data. One wonders how different our civilization would be today if we had all of the documents related to the masterful feats of Greek mechanical engineering and Roman civil engineering today. Just think of the problems that NASA is having in recreating a 40 year old technology to return to the Moon!

We have also been testing in detail the 16 heads that we have. It looks like that we have at least one additional head that can be used as a test head for our alignment procedures of the drive. We have tested and proven the known good head but do not want to use it until we are ready to put a real Lunar Orbiter tape on the drive. Kenneth Williams and Ken Zin have built test fixtures that allow the heads to be tested and the 43 year old relays on the head module to be "cleaned" by exercising them with a signal input.

We have also visited the NASA Ames surplus and have found some useful test equipment, including a rig that allows us to splice tape. We found some 19" racks for test equipment as well and some oscilliscopes. We also picked up an older MacIntosh to use as a server for the printer and our local kludged internet connection so it has been a good week on the scrounging front. Another device that we found is a reader for microfilm. We will use it to compare the images that I have on my microfilm of the Moon to guarantee a match for the analog data vs the film.

Andrew Gold, the CEO of one of the companies in the research park is going to set us up with a fat pipe internet connection gratis this week so this solves our issue of having to pay a NASA contractor $6k for what we were able to do for an $80 dollar piece of hardware.

Conclusion

So basically we are moving forward and working through our challenges! Lots and lots of work in a detailed manner that is necessary to bring the drives back to full operational status and get them back into their original specifications.

Pictures follow.

After being away for a week and coming back I am very happy to report our current progress. The guys have done a marvelous job in turning the McDonald's into a working laboratory. The fake planter in the middle of the room has now been turned into a nice working table for the testing of the hardware on the drives. They have also put together the wiring for power in the area in a manner that is safe and efficient for working. Pictures follow of this.

On the technical side, a lot of progress was made there as well. We have the second drive brought to functional status. Since we don't have the money to replace all the parts we are not going much further but there are things that we can do with the drive to test parts and subsystems while the primary drive is being optimized for full operation. I am including an abbreviated video here but a longer one will be on the Facebook page of both drives operating at once.

Kenneth Williams has been testing all of our heads and it may be that we have more than the one good head. There are electronics that have degraded that may need replacing but there is no reason that we can't get more than one head operational. We have verified that the known good head is in very good shape so we are confident of it when we actually put a real tape on the drive.

We have ordered and the parts are on the way for the Data Acquisition system as well as our image analysis software. We are doing an interim solution for our computer by renting one from the ODIN system here at Ames in order to maintain our schedule and our progress rate.

We are still on track to have a real Lunar Orbiter tape on the drive by the end of the month and we will continue to update you all on our progress. I cannot say enough good about the competence of Ken Zin and the enthusiastic participation and hard work of our students. We are going to be talking to their faculty advisors about them obtaining engineering credit for their work as it has been a very good lesson in overall engineering design and real world experience.

Dennis Wingo: The project is moving forward. We have found a source (former Ampex Field Engineering Head) of further documentation for the drives. We are working out how to get this information to us this week. I have also added Charlie Byrne to our mailing list here as he is the original progenitor of our entire project with his 1965 memo regarding the utility of the analog data. Charlie has graciously offered to help and has a funded LASER contract relative to the film.

When we get images we will be sharing them with him for analysis. We have almost completed replacing the power supply capacitors (except for a shipment that got sent to my office in Alabama rather than to the lab in CA) and we have found procedures whereby we have calibrated the power supplies. Pictures of the machine with updated parts to follow.

We have a quote and timeline from VMI on the heads and are anxiously awaiting any word on the funding for the heads. We have sent the pinch rollers ( a mechanical drive component for the Capstan drive made of rubber) to a refurbishment house and will have a quote for that this week and have them back in about two or three weeks.

The folks at JPL have been incredibly helpful as well and have set up a private website for us that has everything that we need for our submittals to the Planetary Data System. Thanks to Sue Lavoie and the folks down there for being incredibly responsive.

We have our known good head and we have found two others that are in good enough shape to use for testing of the machine.

Kenneth Williams figured out a great way to mount smaller new caps where the big caps went.

We are also beginning debug and alignment procedures for the drive's subsystems this week.

I am in Alabama this week and will be back on the evening of the 11th.

Dennis Wingo: I am doing another one today because a lot of things happened. First of all the students and Lynn Harper's kids came in today and got 90% of all of the tapes out of the boxes and properly categorized. This is a major milestone that Keith enabled. Some of the students have volunteered to come in on Thursday to finish the job. After Pizza everyone was happy that they helped today.

We also received a lot of capacitors today and replaced a lot of parts in the machines. Every part that we replace and update like this makes the machine more stable in operations and function. Following will be pictures of the 90 volt Capstan power supply before and after the new caps. The newer ones are a pretty blue color.

Third, Ken Zin reached another technical milestone tonight by fixing a connector problem that we had that shorted out several signals. After one broken pin that was routed around with coax, the machine powered up and the servos are now locking into synchronization with their control signals, a major milestone to get a real tape to play. A picture of the monitor and the scope displaying the multiburst signal off of the test tape is shown tonight.

We expect a lot more parts tomorrow and Thursday that will be installed in power supplies and starting to replace them on some of the circuit cards. We have a long way to go, but we have also come a very long way. The students will be active tomorrow replacing parts in the machine as well as with a set of spares for the machine. Having known good working spare parts is critical to keeping downtime to a minimum once tape operations are underway on a daily basis. The machines are designed for rapid servicing and all of the students are learning the ins and outs of the machine.

We lament that we will be losing James as he, along with Austin and Kenneth, are doing a great job. I also want them to refurbish the spare vacuum pump and other key parts that will be used as spares and for possible components for the possible second machine. Ken is pretty confident that if the funding is made available that we can get a second drive up and running which could almost cut in half the time for doing the digitization of the images.

We have been hard at it for almost a month now. Ken is taking two days to go to Yosemite and I will be going home for one week next week. I will be back on the evening of the 11th.

Dennis Wingo: The project is rolling on. We have had some good progress on many fronts. Today we had a telecon with JPL (Rafael Alanis and Steven Adams) about the metadata tagging for the images produced from this effort. It was a good telecon and we expect to receive the templates and other information that will allow us to put together the images in the format that will properly integrate with the Planetary Data System.

We also had a major breakthrough today from a friend of a friend of a friends friend for finding documentation for the Ampex FR-900 that is our best drive that we have been working on and operating for the last couple of weeks. A former field service manager from Ampex was found who has the critical schematics and assembly drawings stored on Aperture cards (microfilm on a Hollerith punch card). We have sent him our assembly numbers from our equipment and he is getting a quotation for printing and digitizing the data. We will also have the one document from the Stanford Ampex archive by early next week. Therefore we are reasonably confident that we will have sufficient documentation to fully return to operation the primary FR-900A drive that we have been working on.

Today though, since Ken is troubleshooting individual circuits on the drive and this is not amenable to three or four people working on that simultaneously, I have tasked the students to shift around working with Ken and to completely disassemble and clean the second best drive, an Ampex 901 (that we now know was designed and built especially for the USAF and Eglin AFB) drive that we already have all the documentation on. We have repaired this drive with the top frame from another drive (pictures enclosed) and have washed the drives power supplies and other subsystems. We will attempt to return it to minimal operational status this week as we have time, while focusing on the primary FR-900A drive.

If the follow on funding is obtained to refurbish the heads and the operations, it is our hope that we might possibly have two operational drives (NO PROMISES) which would shorten the time to digitize the images. We will know within a week or two whether this path makes any sense.

Troubleshooting is beginning in ernest now with Ken tracing out circuits. He has found a couple of problems that have been fixed and more that are in process. This is just a very detailed, circuit by circuit process. We have ordered several thousand dollars worth of parts in the last few days and some have already been received and installed. Note in the latest pictures the blue capacitors that are replacing the silver ones. The newer ones are generally much smaller for the same capacitance so some machining of sleeves to make up the difference will be required. Pictures follow.

Tomorrow is tape inventory day with Keith Cowing leading the inventory team of students to get an accurate count of the tapes and then to sort and properly label all the tapes so that we can find the tape that we want when we want during the digitizing process.

All in all we are making steady progress and have reached all of our month one milestones and are well on the way with month two work.

Dennis Wingo: It has been a very busy several days, especially the last two days with several visits by many people small and great. We have still managed to get some work done and we have a working head (not the good one but a least one that works, and we have been able to read RF off of the heads. The servos on the machine are having a hard time syncing up properly, which we knew was going to happen due to their advanced age. We are evaluating whether or not the servos from the drive next to the working one are the same configuration and if so (we think that they are), we will take them apart and refurbish them first. This allows us to use the working machine to continue to debug the electronics, speeding the overall effort.

In the next day or so we will be ordering several thousand dollars worth of detail parts that we have been cataloging from the electronics bays. Today we received enough large electrolytic capacitors that we were able to replace the filter caps in all of the card racks and then reinstall them, allowing us to bring the entire system back together. Basically this allowed us today to test the entire system's power supplies (six big power supplies). We now have at least a full compliment of working power supplies and two known good spare power supplies. Last week we were able to replace almost all of the relays in the system so little by little, things are coming back together.

We have been able to run tape and with a set of heads that we found (worn but still serviceable) we have been running a test tape to begin the process of debugging the signal system.

Our team is now together with Keith leading the effort to properly catalog and sort the tapes for our initial inventory. We are peeling off one of our students to help him and some more students volunteered to help with the work today (at least four)

In another coup today, one of the U.S.G.S. scientists from Flagstaff came by today (Dr. Lisa Gaddis), and came away a believer. Lisa has been working with the film and they have been doing a great job and they have offered help us with the selenographic details of properly registering the images. Couple this with the help from JPL to metatag the data for the Planetary Data System and we have the critical elements that we need to properly integrate the images into the mainstream of NASA image databases.

On top of all of this Charlie Byrne, the scientist from Bellcom that wrote the original justification for NASA to use analog tape drives to preserve a higher quality dataset for Lunar Orbiter came by today. We have his original memo where he laid out the justification for the tapes and we printed this and got him to sign it. It will be preserved and presented to the right people a the right time as a gift. Charlie also signed the drive today! That was an amazing thing and we put his photo on our facebook page today.

Additionally, the Google Moon folks came by yesterday and are seriously considering at least some level of support. Eric Anderson and Peter Diamandis were also by today.

Dennis Wingo: Ok, we have been sandbagging everyone just a little. We have been fixing and cleaning, and testing with power some of the subassemblies for the drive. We have also started reassembling the drive and for the first time since 1992 we have powered the drive up!!

Pictures to follow. However, everything is not all wonderful. We have started ordering parts and for some of them the lead time is weeks. This is going to slow down progress a lot soon. Also, there is a possibility that the drive that we have been working on may not be the one that we eventually return to working order.

The problem is that the documentation that we have is for the two older drives, not the much newer one that is in much better physical condition. This will cause a lot of problems in troubleshooting the newer drive if we can't find the documents for the newer drive.

The drives originally came from Eglin AFB and we may try and see if they still have any documents or materials down there. We tried to call the contact person that we had from Eglin but he died last year. Ken Zin also called one of his contacts, who is in a nursing home and unable to help. We have called Ampex and tomorrow we will talk to the folks at the Stanford Ampex Museum.

There is a very large collection there and we may have to go dig in a warehouse to find the docs but it is a good possibility so all is not lost. This is how these projects go, part detective and part scrounging.

We are to the point where we can test some subsystems and will be doing more to do that over the next week or so.