NASA Opens Space Image Library

slatterz writes with an excerpt from a brief PC Authority article: "NASA is to make its huge collection of historic photographs, film and video available to the public for the first time. A partnership with the non-profit Internet Archive will see 21 major NASA imagery collections merged into a single searchable online resource. The NASA Images website is expected to go live this week. The content of the site covers all the diverse activities of America's space program, including imagery from the Apollo missions, Hubble Space Telescope views of the universe and experimental aircraft past and present." The site is working already, and it looks fantastic. Don't hesitate to share any interesting pictures or movies you find.

Comments

hopefully they'll start from the beginning

[beanerspace]

This is great, my only hope is that they start with the older stuff first.

I've got some old 8x10's my father would bring home - he was an engineer at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center from the beginning of the space race through to the Jupiter probe.

Now I have these wonderful images I can share with my young daughter of what an old computer looks like and the slide-ruled people who ran them.

I know I'm gushing, but this is going to be great in so many ways, as along with some spectacular shots of space - we'll also see down-to-earth images of the culture at the time that cannot be expressed even in 1000 words.

Re:hopefully they'll start from the beginning

[eclectro]

we'll also see down-to-earth images of the culture at the time that cannot be expressed even in 1000 words.

Obviously

Re:hopefully they'll start from the beginning

[rts008]

I hope that they can find the missing tapes. :)

I am not only a NASA brat, but also worked at GSFC circa 1976-1976 for Bendix as a sub contractor at the NTTF facility there.
Neat stuff happening then, and now.

Hopefully your daughter can experience the 'cool, awesome, and wow' factor we went through...that job sparked my interest in astrophysics even though at the time I was working in Logistics fresh out of my high school.

Long before I was old enough to think beyond 'Wow-cool- ASTRONAUTS!!-I loved 'playing' in the Mercury and Gemini capsules when I went to work with Dad before I was old enough to be hired there. (circa 7th grade I think)

Dude! Talk to your Dad with your Daughter present. That was a great time for the Space Race!
Don't quash her spirit or ambitions....feed them instead!

I would not be surprised if my Dad had not known your Dad.

Rock on dude!...don't deny your daughter, but encourage her.

P.S.
This post hit me out of the blue so to speak...and I have been drinking,...But give your daughter all of the facts and guide her in her discoveries and provide her with the facts.

Astrophysics is an interesting and growing field now days. Help her out in the right direction! (my humble opinion-end lecture)

Re:hopefully they'll start from the beginning

[Teancum]

My father worked as a photographer for a NASA (& DOD) contractor and had access to a rather large set of high resolution photos that came from space as well. One of them was a high resolution image of the whole Earth taken at the Equator that shows nearly the entire western hemisphere. I think it was likely a weather satellite photo, but the resolution is simply outstanding as it is an actual photograph.

This photo, BTW, is now above my son's bed and has become a family heirloom.

My only regret was that I didn't get any more of those images, but in defense of my father a great many of those images were classified secret or top secret. I'm amazed what he brought out of that place and showed me as it was.

Re:hopefully they'll start from the beginning

[unlametheweak]

The flag in that photo looks like it was Photoshopped.

Rover tracks

[CmdrSammo]

I really like this image showing the rover tracks leading back to the Apollo 14 Lunar Module "Antares".

How anyone can look at this image in particular and claim the landings were faked is beyond me. It's a wonderful image, let's just hope we'll be back there soon to take more!

Re:Rover tracks

[Negatyfus]

It's obviously shopped. I mean, the shadows are way off. I could do that in MS Paint.

Re:Rover tracks

[miraboo]

Come on mods this is funny, its xkcd ( http://xkcd.com/331/ ). And as we know this is slashdot and allusions to xkcd automatically go to +5.

Re:Rover tracks

[MichaelSmith]

I really like this image showing the rover tracks leading back to the Apollo 14 Lunar Module "Antares".

Apollo 14 didn't have a rover. Those tracks would have been made by the MET (Modular Equipment Transporter).

The LRV was first flown on Apollo 15 and IMHO was about 1000 times more effective than working without a rover.

Re:Amazing picture

[Anonymous Coward]

I found this...
"Irregular Moons Discovered Around Uranus"

'nough said...

These images aren't correct...

[Puffy Director Pants]

They photoshopped out the Aliens and the Moonbase and the spot where Superman had a fight with that evil blond guy.

Thank you NASA

[node159]

I always found that the images from Voyager 1 put our insignificance in perspective. This is a wonderful thing for NASA to do and I hope it will inspire many of current and future generations.

Poor image quality on more recent images

[Coolhand2120]

These images are amazing! I'm curious why all the 'newer' images are always low quality (small). I know they have larger, higher quality images, and I've seen some of the larger images on the JPL and NASA site, however, the large images are usually older missions and there are quite a few poor images, Mars rover mission for instance, that are obviously smaller versions of the original. I hope I'm mistaken and these full resolution images are available, but I've looked pretty good and can't seem to find them, so if there there it's not obvious where they are. Can anyone enlighten me?

Re:Poor image quality on more recent images

[david.given]

The old images were taken on real photographic film, which was then brought back to Earth and developed. Hugely expensive due to having to ship all that mass around, and only feasible at all on sample-return missions, but the quality is superb. The new images are taken using digital cameras, JPEG compressed, and transmitted back using the Deep Space Network; as a result, the quality is much lower. (On the other hand, shipping photographic film back from Mars is a little beyond our technical expertise right now.)

It is possible to take high-resolution pictures from Mars, but it's not done very often because it takes too long --- a couple of weeks for a decent panorama; dozens of low-resolution pictures need to be taken, transmitted back, and then pieced together (mostly by hand). It's far more cost-effective to use low-resolution pictures. At that distance bandwidth is the main limitation; they've just been upgraded to a 256kbps connection, and the DSN only listens to them in short windows.

This is less of a problem for spacecraft nearer Earth; JAXA's Kaguya lunar probe can send back HDTV video, for example, although still not live.

Re:Poor image quality on more recent images

[Coolhand2120]

What you're saying makes a lot of since. I didn't know the connections were so slow or intermittent. But even at 256kbps you should be able to download quite a few high resolution images, especially considering the amount of time they have had. Even with JAXA's Kaguya probe, they only released low resolution (low dimensions 800x600 for example), I only looked at the images when they came out a few months ago, but they were very small, maybe they released higher resolution images now.

This is a baseless guess, but I figured there was some monetary value attached to the full resolution image, and they were just waiting to auction it off to the highest bidder. And if that's ever been the case, seems like a publicly funded organization like NASA ought to act more like a library and less like the gift shop at Disneyland. I don't know they do that so it's just a suspicion, not trying to make accusations. It's not baseless though! We (the people) pay for the roads and sidewalks, but that does not stop the government from making parking meters.

I hope you're right and I'm just paranoid.

Re:Poor image quality on more recent images

[wsloand]

It is not monetary value it's scientific value. Generally the scientist who is has the rights to the telescope time (or who has helped design or run the mission, etc.) has rights to the data for a limited time (I think it's 6 months). After that time the images are released for the (scientific) general public. The difference here is that it's put into a form that the really general public can access the materials.

No reason for paranoia in this case that I'm aware of.

Remember

[hyades1]

In spite of all the criticism, much of it deserved, something like this reminds us that NASA has had its share of triumphs. I hope they start to find their way again.

Finally

[Xelios]

One of the things that always annoyed me about NASA is that so little media gets released. You read news articles boasting how one of their probes has taken thousands of pictures, and maybe 10 of those ever get released to the general public. The public funds NASA, and I think a site like this can go a long way to convincing people that this funding is worth it.

HiRise is pretty cool too.

Bummer

[Daimanta]

No pics of the studio where they filmed the moon landing :(

Apollo 11 and 17 Landing Videos

[florescent_beige]

I browsed quickly through the site and didn't see any video.

Two of my very favorite things to watch, and I could literally sit and watch them over and over for weeks are the Apollo 11 and 17 landing videos.

NASA has placed online full video libraries for both Apollo 11 and Apollo 17. *

The actual Apollo 11 landing is here (16 minutes).

The actual Apollo 17 landing is here (4 minutes).

The Apollo 17 video will send shivers up and down your spine I guarantee it.

* Most unfortunately, the videos are in Quicktime(tm) format. If you, like me, use Windows, go here to get Quicktime. If you have NoScript, disable it for that page because there is a script that autodetects your OS. Download the most basic player and uncheck all options because Apple tries to install all sorts of incredibly annoying nag- and crap-ware. Also make sure you do not select auto-update because thats another level of nagging to upgrade to a paid service. Finally, use Spybot to disable the Apple updater in your startup list.