Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing at the LOIRP have been working to understand exactly what Lunar Orbiter 1 saw as it looked back at Earth on 23 August 1966. When LOIRP released its first retrieved image last year they included some attempts to correlate the Earth with rough boundries. In so doing they discovered that the time estimated back in 1966 was off by an hour or so. Dennis has now taken another stab at trying to understand what we all saw when Lunar Orbiter took this portrait of Earth. Click on image to enlarge. Image copyright 2009 LOIRP. Permission required for republication.
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Forty years ago my task as an intern (co-op student) at NASA Langley in 1967 was to roll through some of the tapes from LO II and III. NASA Langley in Virginia managed the Lunar Orbiter project, I believe. I cataloged the frames and recorded the info on paper- very low tech. I still have copies of some of the B & W composite pictures that were created from the tapes and given out to people visiting Langley. Although the job was a bit tedious at times, almost every day I’d come upon an amazing frame that gave me pause.
I’m so glad these are being preserved in a manner that makes them available to everyone.
carol