Please Help Fund the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project

House of Representatives Honors Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, Congressional Record

“As with the Lunar Orbiter’s images themselves, the efforts of those who have devoted themselves to this project should not go unnoticed or unrecorded. Although space exploration is a vast, complicated enterprise, it ultimately relies on individuals who have the vision and imagination to move us forward. The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project is an example of that kind of vision and imagination, and those who have contributed to the Project and to preceding efforts surely deserve our gratitude.”

NASA Dives Into Its Past to Retrieve Vintage Satellite Data, Science Magazine

“They cleaned, rebuilt, and reassembled one drive, then designed and built equipment to convert the analog signals into an exact 16-bit digital copy. “It was like dumpster diving for science,” says Cowing, co-team leader at LOIRP. In November 2008, the team recovered their first image: a famous picture of an earthrise taken by Lunar Orbiter 1 on 23 August 1966. The team’s new high-resolution version was so crisp and clear that it revealed many previously obscured details, such as a fog bank lying along the coast of Chile. “We thought if the Earth’s surface looks that good a quarter of a million miles away, what does the moon’s surface look like 100 miles beneath it?” says Cowing.”

Keith’s note: A number of us have been donating time and money to this project since 2008. Thanks to your generosity, the LOIRP has already raised enough to order a tape drive head to be refurbished. Please support the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project at RocketHub as our team works to finish this project.