This newly retrieved high resolution image, frame 3081_H2, was taken by Lunar Orbiter 3 on 17 February 1967 at 21:09 GMT LPI reference. Images: [large at LOIRP] [Very Large at NASA NLSI]
Lunar Orbiter 3 Image 3081_H2
LOIRP Status Report 20 August 2013
Dennis Wingo: I couldn’t help it. We needed to know the sequences in the tapes for Goldstone as the sequence numbers that we have used forever are missing. So, I ran the first Lunar Orbiter V Goldstone tape today with the nearly dead head. It worked pretty well. So it was captured and one more high res image down!
G5-001, partial capture LOV-006H (90 framelets)
We got almost a complete high res image and I can now figure out what sequence number it is from (002) and thus know what is coming next and how that fits with the Woomera data that we already have.
End of day update. G4-001 looked pretty good and there are two tapes in that sequence. Soooo….
G5-002, complete capture LOV-005H
Note that image 005H is the lowest numbered high resolution frame for Lunar Orbiter V. The Goldstone captures started three days before the Woomera ones for some reason so it bears to reason that for a while Goldstone has images that don’t exist with the tapes we have already run. I may run another tape or two just to see how far I can go before the head completely dies, that is, if the image quality is still good.
Lunar Orbiter 3 Image 3081_H1
This newly retrieved high resolution image, frame 3081_H1, was taken by Lunar Orbiter 3 on 17 February 1967 at 21:09 GMT LPI reference. Images: [large at LOIRP] [Very Large at NASA NLSI]
Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project In The News
Abandoned McDonald’s Holds Glimpse of Life on Moon, BloombergBusinessWeek
In this installment of Secret Valley, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Ashlee Vance visits NASA’s Ames Research Center where a forgotten McDonald’s, nicknamed “McMoon’s,” serves as the headquarters for a project to digitize fifty year old photographs of the surface of the moon.
Video Offers a Glimpse Into NASA’s Film Digitization Efforts in an Old McDonald’s, PetaPixel
In July of last year, we introduced you to the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP), an effort by the NASA Ames Research Center to digitize some 48,000 pounds of 70mm tape shot by the five lunar orbiters that were sent up to photograph the surface of the moon in preparation for the Apollo missions.
Priceless moon photos getting processed at an old McDonald’s, Houston Chronicle
Near the Ames Research Center in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, a team funded by NASA is in the process of digitizing photos taken of the moon in the 1960s. These are pictures of the moon before men touched down, taken from five lunar orbiters that shot footage of it in preperation of exploration. Where they are doing it is the best part. The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) has been hard at work since July 2008 inside an old McDonald’s location on the Ames campus converting 48,000 pounds of 70mm tape.
Lunar Orbiter 3 Image 3079_H2
This newly retrieved high resolution image, frame 3079_H2, was taken by Lunar Orbiter 3 on 17 February 1967 at 14:12 GMT LPI reference. Images: [large at LOIRP] [Very Large at NASA NLSI]
Crater Wargo
NASA Asks International Astronomical Union to Name Lunar Crater After Mike Wargo
“NASA is asking the International Astronomical Union to name a crater on the moon in his honor “so his name will be forever enshrined in the heavens.”
– NASA Lunar Exploration Analysis Group Statement on the Passing of Dr. Michael Wargo, earlier post
– Mike Wargo, earlier post
Lunar Orbiter 3 Image 3079_H1
This newly retrieved high resolution image, frame 3079_H1, was taken by Lunar Orbiter 3 on 17 February 1967 at 14:12 GMT LPI reference. Images: [large at LOIRP] [Very Large at NASA NLSI]
Lunar Orbiter 3 Image 3065_H3
This newly retrieved high resolution image, frame 3065_H3, was taken by Lunar Orbiter 3 on 16 February 1967 at 17:19 GMT LPI reference. Images: [large at LOIRP] [Very Large at NASA NLSI]
Video: Abandoned McDonald’s Holds Glimpse of Life on Moon
August 15 (Bloomberg) — In this installment of Secret Valley, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Ashlee Vance visits NASA’s Ames Research Center where a forgotten McDonald’s, nicknamed “McMoon’s,” serves as the headquarters for a project to digitize fifty year old photographs of the surface of the moon. (Source: Bloomberg)
Lunar Orbiter V’s Mountains: Improving The View (Update)
Update: Compare our image (left) with the best quality USGS image (right) – Click on image to enlarge. Here’s the full resolution TIFF image (caution: over 600MB). By the way the odd craters in the middle are Messier A and B.
Dennis Wingo: I love looking at the Moon. It is one of my little joys in doing the LOIRP project that I get to look at amazing images of the Moon that we get that look so incredible. Just by chance yesterday I was looking through some processed framelets because I had a discrepancy between what I was recording in my log book of the Lunar Orbiter sequence numbers and the framelets on the tapes as recorded by NASA. I happened upon image LOV-041M from tapes W5-154, 155.
I started looking at the framelets and found the super cool oblique shots interesting when looking at them on the 30″ Apple high res monitor. We just had to get that image and so we found that we were missing a few framelets due to a tape change and thus we got the rest off of a Goldstone tape (G5-145).
Last night Austin ran the framelets through our assembly and image processing program and left me the frame. I loaded it on my computer this morning and was just simply blown away by it when zooming in. It seriously looks like you are on a spacecraft about 50 km above the surface looking down. The first image here is a zoom into the upper right quadrant of that image. The second image is from the Arizona State Quickmap looking straight down into the same area.
One thing that is just so fascinating to me is how much more I get out of the oblique images when trying to get a sense of an area. You can actually see how high a mountain is that just looks like a bump when looking down on it from a vertical perspective. This is making me revise my estimation of the value of many of the LO images because it is extremely difficult for the LROC camera, if not impossible, to get images like this.
Today the full res frame will go up on the NLSI web server and we will provide the link to the 691 megabyte image. Hope you have a good network connection! I will post the link to the high res image when Teague gets it on the server! Update: Here’s the full resolution image (over 600MB)
Click on images to enlarge
Reassembling a Third FR-900 Tape Drive
Dennis Wingo: This is Jacob Gold’s last days with us and one of the projects that we have wanted to get done is to reassemble the third FR-900 tape drive. We are not going to try and get it working as it is a record only machine and we don’t really need to record anything! However, we can use it to possibly raise money. We want to get another head and if we can get $10k of it that would be great. NOTE. This thing weighs 900 lbs when reassembled and thus we are NOT going to ship it out of the Bay area. We MIGHT ship it to LA as will fit in the back of my truck. Just a thought. And here are a couple of pictures of Jacob working on the machine today.
Lunar Orbiter V View: Mountains on The Moon
Dennis Wingo: These two images here were captured from a frame let of our W5-155 tape, which is from image LOV-041M. The original image, at LPI is here. This is what our tiny blow up of that region looks like. We have both the raw (bottom) and the inverted (top) positive image, but with no other processing. We are blown away with what it looks like on the screen. Click on images to enlarge. We are looking forward to start seeing some image output!