Slashdot Mirror
Volunteers Recover Lunar Orbiter 1 Photographs
mikael writes "The LA Times is reporting on the efforts of a group of volunteers with funding from NASA to recover high resolution photographs of the Moon taken by Lunar Orbiter 1 in the 1960s. The collection of 2000 images is stored entirely on magnetic tape which can only be read by a $330,000 FR-900 Ampex magnetic tape reader. The team consisted of Nancy Evans, NASA's archivist who ensured that the 20-foot by 10-foot x 6-foot collection of magnetic tapes were never thrown out, Dennis Wingo, Keith Cowing of NASA Watch and Ken Zim who had experience of repairing video equipment. Two weeks ago, the second image, of the Copernicus Crater, was recovered."
http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2009/03/newly_restored_picture_of_the.html
And a little bit more background on the LOIRP here: http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-111408a.html
I thought it was funny seeing all the tapes in the kitchen of an old McDonalds, with the tape drive in the lobby.
Is this whats your looking for?
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/LOIRP/LOIRP_moon.html
You can download the full[? 1700x3600px] resolution image from NASA's website:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/LOIRP/loirp-gallery-index.html
Still lost AFAIK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program_missing_tapes
You can use an atomic force microscope with a magnetic tip to do that, but it's a very slow and tedious process. It's often called magnetic force microscopy.
It is pretty expensive ~$100k to $1M for an instrument, then you have to pay someone to run it, and the software...
If you had some good engineers and really had money to spend on development, you could probably get about 10 microns of tape per second, or about 1 meter of tape per day. That's not too bad, actually, compared to what they did.
2000 years ago, not much hard copy information was created, but it was written on sheepskin, and the like, most which is still available now.
800 years ago, much more information was created, and it was written on papyrus, some of which has degraded, but some of which is still available now.
70 years ago, great amounts of information was created, and it was recorded on newsprint, or those new fangled "phonograph" thingies, many of which have deteriorated or been otherwise destroyed, but some of which are available now.
10 years ago, vast, incomprehensible amounts of information were created, mostly stored in electronic digital formats, the great majority of which is not accessible today, although small amounts of it is.
What in the world makes you think that in 40 years there will be a "more future-proof media"? I'd guess in 40 years we'll have data formats and storage that last on the order of minutes, rather than years.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
You're wrong - but only by about an order of magnitude. A 6x6cm Hasselblad frame records at least 400 megapixel equivalent (according to my tests with medium format frames and drum scanners).
you had me at #!
"Ah, the Slashdot know-it-alls strike again. Yes, you know Sooooooooo much more than NASA about their equipment."
I made no such claim. However, there is a very good chance I know more about it than a volunteer biologist and a few other volunteers who were not trained in computers and electronics as I have been. Not to mention the reporter who wrote the article.
The manufacturer was Ampex, a maker (at that time) of tape recorders and tape drives, and the technology is not particularly exotic. I have no doubt that they were very expensive to make at the time, but then so were computers. Today, my several-years-old Palm Pilot is more powerful, in every meaningful way, than a computer that filled rooms and cost millions of dollars back then.
So why is there any surprise here? Much less sarcasm.
You know what? never mind. I shouldn't be feeding the trolls anyway.
Here's a nice hi-res image: http://images.spaceref.com/news/2009/lo2.copernicus.med.jpg
Approx 2160px × 1825px and 700 kb
And if you're really brave, there's a 2gb scan online!!!
http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov/files/LOVframe162h3.tif
I imagine that might take awhile to load into your browser. I can't imagine pictures being posted online in the gigabyte range... maybe 50 years from now that will be a standard porn format, who knows o_O
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
1961
Ampex introduced the first commercial helical scan videotape recorder. This became the basis for all videocassette equipment and is utilized in all home VTRs today
The FR 900 used helical scan heads.
The Copernicus Crater link is the first time I've ever had Firefox 3 resize its window. WTH?
It's called javascript, numbnuts. You can turn it off with noscript or Tools - Options - Content - Advanced.
The photographic system on the spacecraft was 70mm optical film that was processed on board the spacecraft and then electronically scanned and transmitted to earth.
"Give me six lines of C++ code written by the most competent programmer, and I will find enough in there to hang him."
Options -> Content -> Enable JavaScript -> Advanced -> Untick "Move or resize existing windows"
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/LOIRP/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/LOIRP/loirp-gallery-index.html
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/11/20071107_kaguya_e.html
http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/kaguya/hd.html
A lot are downsampled, but I'm guessing the HD footage is available in some way. I just picked the first couple search results.
I don't know about the tape machine but I read they had to restore one of the only available machines left to working order before beginning at all. Luckily they managed to fix it. I'm guessing you can't just use any read head or machine for any tape.. either that or it does processing that would be expensive and infeasible to recreate in software. I'm sure they would have gone an easier route if there was one. These aren't dumb people. The tape reader didn't cost them $300k (or anything) so there's no point to including that.
As for a lunar rover, lunar orbiting robotic satellites would be a much better way if you want to film the entire surface of the Moon. JAXA's Kaguya is doing that and the Indian Chandraayan I believe too. For example, Mars is bigger than the Moon, but the Mars Rovers haven't seen that much of Mars as an overall percentage.
Also:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=LUNARRO
It will have a high-res camera. I don't see any specs though.
simple, fast homepage with your links: http://www.ngumbi.com/