Official website of the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP)
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. Epps4
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.
Continue reading “Analysis of Lunar Orbiter Images Recovered From Analog Tape”
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 [email protected].
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.
NASA was prepared to release the tapes to the custody of Wingo and Co., but they required that the tapes be stored in a government facility. Locating the tapes near Zin residence lead the team to seek out facilities at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Other advantages to the location are that Ampex, the company that built the tape drives, is still operating just 12 miles up the road, retired employees live in the area, and a collection of Ampex Corporation documentation is located at nearby Stanford University.
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.”