Hunt for Apollo’s lost dog Snoopy, Skymania
“Astronomers are teaming up with schools to use robotic telescopes over the internet to scan the night sky and find the spacecraft. The telescopes, part of the Faulkes Telescope Project run by Glamorgan University, are in Hawaii and Australia meaning schools can look with them during normal lesson times in the UK.”
Bill Muehlberger
Memorial: Bill Muehlberger, University of Teaxs Austin
“The Jackson School community mourns the loss of Bill Muehlberger and extend their condolences to his family. He died of natural causes on Wednesday, September 14. An emeritus professor in geology, he taught at the University of Texas at Austin for nearly 40 years before officially retiring in 1992. He also taught geology to multiple generations of NASA astronauts beginning with Apollo.
“Apollo 18”, LOIRP, and Conspiracies
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 https://moonviews.wpenginepowered.com
I bring up LOIRP for one reason: the nature of the original photos and what people imagine they see. Unlike most planetary missions, the Lunar Orbiter probes took their images on conventional film which was chemically processed in lunar orbit, scanned electronically, and the data sent back to Earth by radio. While the automated photo developing process itself was amazing, it had flaws. Often times problems with the chemicals or the gears would leave blobs and strange shapes on the images. ANyone who has spent time looking at the photos knows what I mean.
Well … some people with over active imaginations have concluded that a secret government agency obliterated certain things to keep us from learning the truth (whatever that might be). Secret moon bases I guess. Others see strange shapes which they have decided are bulldozers or cities. What they never bother to check is the scale of these photos. If there were indeed bulldozers on the Moon these Lunar Orbiter photos they’d be 10 miles high.
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.”
NASA Announces Media Teleconference on New Apollo Images
NASA will host a media teleconference at noon on Tuesday, Sept. 6, to reveal new images of three Apollo landing sites taken from the agency’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO. Teleconference participants are:
— Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington
— Mark Robinson, principal investigator, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, Arizona State University, Tempe
— Richard Vondrak, LRO project scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
To participate in the teleconference, reporters must email Nancy Jones at [email protected] with their name, media affiliation and work telephone number by 10 a.m. on Sept. 6.
Supporting information and visuals for the briefing will be posted at 11:45 a.m. EDT Sept. 6 at: http://www.nasa.gov/lro Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live on the Web at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio
Technoarchaeology: 40 Year Old Mariner 5 Solar Wind Problem Finds Answer
Research led by astrophysicists at the University of Warwick has resolved a 40 year old problem with observations of turbulence in the solar wind first made by the probe Mariner Five. The research resolves an issue with what is by far the largest and most interesting natural turbulence lab accessible to researchers today.
Our current understanding tells us that turbulence in the solar wind should not be affected by the speed and direction of travel of that solar wind. However when the first space probes attempted to measure that turbulence they found their observations didn’t quite match that physical law. The first such data to be analysed from Mariner 5 in 1971 found a small but nonetheless irritatingly clear pattern in the turbulence perpendicular to both the direction of the travel and the magnetic field the solar wind was travelling through.
Continue reading “Technoarchaeology: 40 Year Old Mariner 5 Solar Wind Problem Finds Answer”
First Earthrise Photo Taken 45 Years Ago Today
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
Video: Comparing Lunar Orbiter and LRO Images of the Apollo 11 Landing Site
This video compares the best Lunar Orbiter Image and one of the best LRO Images of the Apollo 11 landing site. The photos were taken over 40 years apart. The Lunar Orbiter photo was taken in 1967 before Apollo 11 landed on the moon, whereas the LRO image was taken on December 22, 2009 and shows the LM Eagle’s descent stage resting on the lunar surface.
LOIRP Mentioned at Apollo 11 Anniversary Celebration, MoonViews
“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.”
Damaged Tape and Murky Moon Views, MoonViews
“We recently released two Apollo landing site images – Apollo 12 and Apollo 14 and had embarked upon getting an nice crisp image of the Apollo 11 landing site in time for the anniversary.”
Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project Mentioned by NASA Advisory Council
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.
More VIPs Visit McMoons
(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 McMoons
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.
Has The Lunar Orbiter 2 Impact Site Been Found by LRO?
An odd-looking impact feature raises an intriguing, Apollo-era trivia question (3.02°S, 119.15°E). NAC image number M141485413; incidence angle 12°; Sun is from the east; north is up; image is ~600 meters across [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].
Lunar Orbiter 2 was an unmanned imaging spacecraft used in November and early December 1966 to aid with Apollo and Surveyor landing site selection. The spacecraft became famous in 1967 with the public release of an oblique image of Copernicus crater (one of only four obliques collected), which was hailed as the “Picture of the Century” by the news media of the day. According to the 2007 International Atlas of Lunar Exploration, the Lunar Orbiter 2 spacecraft was commanded to crash into the lunar farside surface on October 11, 1967.
The coordinates of the Lunar Orbiter 2 impact are given as 119.1° east longitude and 3.0° north latitude, which match those of the feature in the NAC image (measured at 119.149° east longitude, and 3.020° north latitude). However, the published Lunar Orbiter 2 numbers are given as a rough estimate because the impact occurred on the farside of the Moon, out of direct radio contact. So the match with the NAC coordinates could be a coincidence.
The impact appears much too large (~85 m in diameter) to be the result of an impact from a spacecraft only a few meters tall, but with a solar incidence angle of only 12 degrees, it is difficult to see the crater rim and find out the true diameter. Perhaps the ejecta pattern extends far beyond the immediate impact. The truth is that we are not sure what caused this impact feature. We are currently re-targeting the area under a higher incidence angle to help with crater rim measurements. Stay tuned!
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Lunar Orbiter 2 Frame 2046_H2
This newly retrieved high resolution image, frame 2046_H2, was taken by Lunar Orbiter 2 on 19 November 1966 at 15:44:28 GMT LPI reference Images: [large] [Very Large]