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."

Comments

Higher res image on this page...

[jerk]

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.

Re:Any news on lost Apollo 11 tapes?

[Swampash]

Still lost AFAIK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program_missing_tapes

Re:Irony

[Anenome]

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