Behind the counter of an abandoned McDonalds lie 48,000 lbs of 70mm tape… the only copy of extremely high-resolution images of the moon.

(I can now make the photos of the pirate project public; they were private to flickr friends before)

The tapes were recorded 42 years ago by Lunar Orbiter 1 to map the lunar surface to plan landing spots for Apollo 11 onward. They have never been seen by the public because at the time, they were classified as they reveal the extreme precision of our 1960s spy satellites. Instead, all we have ever seen are the purposely grainy photo-of-a-photo images that were released to the public.

The spacecraft did not ship this film back to Earth. Instead, they developed the film on the Lunar Orbiter and then raster scanned the negatives with a 5 micron spot (200 lines/millimeter resolution) and beamed the data back to Earth using yet-to-be-patented-by-others lossless analog compression. Three ground stations on Earth (one was in Madrid) recorded the transmissions on magnetic tapes.

Recovering the data has proven to be very difficult, requiring technological archeology. The only working version of the Ampex tape player ($300K when new) was discovered in a Los Angeles chicken coop and restored with the help of the original designer. There is only one person on Earth who still refurbishes the tape heads, and the skills to read this data archive were on the cusp of disappearing forever. (Short video of image recovery)

The photo above is from the NASA LIORP project, and is a cropped subset of the first image retrieved. (full res)

Some of the applications of this project, beyond accessing the best images of the moon ever taken, are to look for new landing sites for the new Google Lunar X-Prize robo-landers, and to compare the new craters on the moon today to 40 years ago, a measure of micrometeorite flux and risk to future lunar operations.

17 responses to “Earthrise”

  1. The Rocketeer Avatar
    The Rocketeer

    I really enjoyed looking at the detail of the large view. Thanks for posting this, Steve.

    Reply
  2. Jeff Clow Avatar
    Jeff Clow

    Hard to believe this was taken 42 years ago…….and your caption was damn interesting.

    Thaks for sharing, Steve.

    Reply
  3. jitze Avatar
    jitze

    We all know that the alleged moon landings were a propaganda plot dreamed up by hegemony-seeking imperialist running dogs – filmed on a studio lot somewhere in New Mexico. And now you are openly admitting that these pictures were genned up in an abandoned McDonalds somewhere.

    See – I told ya so!

    Seriously – that full-res image is mind-blowing. And scanning (in orbit) with a 5 micron spot over four decades ago – the support electronics alone (think assembling, compressing, buffering, transmitting) – before the days of IC’s – a huge accomplishment. Somewhere are some unsung heroes.

    Reply
  4. Todd Huffman Avatar
    Todd Huffman

    Amazing.

    I hope the engineers responsible get a chance to see this come to light.

    In case you’re watching — bravo!

    Reply
  5. Ramones Karaoke Avatar
    Ramones Karaoke

    That is amazing. All aspects of it – the image itself, the fact that discrete transistor technology made it, the fact it was developed inside an unmanned vehicle and beamed home. And that it was almost lost. Amazing.

    Reply
  6. Victor1 Avatar
    Victor1

    Interesting how technology is helping wipe out our own history… only the information that is constantly updated to the current media survive, so if you want to ‘preserve’ something now, you have to update its data continuously through every form of new data formats that comes up, and since that is endless, vast amounts of information are vanishing that were already ‘collected’

    This is what will happen to this entire generation’s digital photographs due to the low level of computer skills – people just don’t back up, and if they do, the back-ups become obsolete unless ‘re-backed up’ with every new technology.
    I’m glad my childhood was recorded on physical film. Even ordinary paper has greater longevity and ability to be ‘read’ than any technological contrivance since then, and will continue to be so given the ‘constant change’ factor of technologies and formats, that eventually means ‘no memory at all’ outside the fantasy bubble of another technology coming to save the day. A 500 year old bible can be opened and read, but even a computer doc from the 80’s can’t be accessesed, unless it was part of a steady updating process…. good luck finding anyone in the practice of that!

    Reply
  7. AH in Pgh Avatar
    AH in Pgh

    Fascinating to learn about this. Thank you for all the info.

    Reply
  8. hallowed bicycle Avatar
    hallowed bicycle

    Well done, indeed. Kudos to all involved!

    Reply
  9. TomiTapio Avatar
    TomiTapio

    Good blogging, J-man.

    Reply
  10. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    And a happy 40th anniversary of Apollo 8 today!

    Reply
  11. drduke_10 Avatar
    drduke_10

    Awesome!

    Reply
  12. sbove Avatar
    sbove

    Oh my, the full res version is spectacular! – somehow I missed this until you cross-linked it today…

    3 questions…

    1) What was the acquisition path (mm of lens, size/type of film)…looks like it might have been a Hasselblad 2×2…

    2) What are the odd little data frames along the right edge…never seen that encode before…they are sequentially numbered and appear to contain grey scale and resolving-line test patterns…probably from the 5 micron scanner…so the folks on earth could detect compression artifacts or tx errors??

    3) Where are the "negatives" that they scanned in space?

    Pre-answer inferred per your "Pirate McDonalds" post:

    Special cameras developed for defense surveillance were mounted in the unmanned orbiters, they shot high res (slow) black and white negative film, the negatives were auto processed, scanned, and beamed. No positive prints were ever struck and the negatives were lost b/c the unmanned orbiters never came back to earth…

    The odd little data frames on the right edge are a special/proprietary method for gauging accuracy of beam-back on a per horizontal block basis.

    Reply
  13. keithcowing Avatar
    keithcowing

    The official website for the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) is http://www.moonviews.com – images, news, project history, participatory exploration – and more.

    Reply
  14. tame smash Avatar
    tame smash

    fantastic quality!

    Reply
  15. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Here’s a cool diagram (from Dennis Wingo of LOIRP) of how the Lunar Orbiter took this first famous Earthrise photo and a post I made on the flight hardware I have on displayLunar Orbiter High-Gain Antenna

    Reply
  16. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Kodak camera unit with 70mm film spools: And a New Yorker carton from back in the day, referencing the banded images produced

    Reply
  17. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Incredible Apollo images of Earth. Painstakingly restored
    : http://www.tobyord.com/earth

    Reply

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