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The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) is a NASA project to digitize data tapes from the five 1966 and 1967 Lunar Orbiter spacecraft that were sent to the Moon.

Background

The tapes from the Lunar Orbiter missions were primarily used to locate landing sites for the manned Apollo missions, and once those missions were over, the data was largely forgotten. The original tapes were carefully archived for 20 years in Maryland. When the tapes were released back to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, in about 1986, the decision of whether to scrap the tapes became the responsibility of archivist Nancy Evans. She instinctively decided that the tapes should be preserved. She recalled, "I could not morally get rid of this stuff".

Within a few years, Nancy Evans was able to start a small project with funding from NASA and some assistance from Mark Nelson at Caltech. Eventually, they managed to find four rare Ampex FR-900 tape drives—highly specialized drives that had only been used by government agencies such as the FAA, USAF, and NASA. (The FR-900's transport was adapted from the 2" Quadruplex videotape format, only in the FR-900's case, the drive was designed to record a wideband analog signal of any type for instrumentation or other purposes, rather than specifically a video signal as in 2" Quad's case.) Over time, they also collected documentation and spare parts for the tape drives from government surplus. The project was successful at getting raw analog data from the tapes, but in order to generate the images, they discovered that they needed the specialized demodulation hardware that had been used by the Lunar Orbiter program, which no longer existed. They attempted to get funding from NASA or private sources to build the hardware, but were unsuccessful. Eventually, both Nancy Evans and Mark Nelson went on to other projects while the tape drives sat in Nancy Evans' garage.

By 2005, Evans was nearing 70 years old, getting ready to retire, and ready to get rid of the tape drives—hopefully to a project that would retrieve the data from the tapes. One day, Dennis Wingo, president of the aerospace engineering company SkyCorp and a long-time veteran of space and computing technologies, was surfing the Internet and came across a white paper about Nancy Evans' project, and quickly became interested. He knew he could muster the technical skills to tackle the management of renovating the tape drives, he could find contacts at NASA, and most importantly, he knew that the Moon was becoming a hot property again. Wingo said, "I knew the value of the tape drives and the tapes". Another group thought the same, writing, "future missions to the Moon have re-energized the lunar community and renewed interest in the Lunar Orbiter data".

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was set to go to the moon in 2009, and one of its primary goals was to determine the risk to people working on the surface of the Moon. The LRO would create images of the surface that could be compared to the highest resolution images taken of the Moon during the Apollo era. The original Lunar Orbiter images are the highest resolution images of the Moon that had ever been taken until the LRO started taking images in the fall of 2009. The Lunar Orbiter images would be invaluable to scientists studying changes in the Moon's surface.

Expertise and facilities

February 2007 was the first time that Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing, a former NASA employee, saw the four Ampex FM-900 tape drives, which had been stored in Nancy Evans' overcrowded garage next to a chicken run. Each drive was about 6 feet tall, 3 feet wide, as deep as a refrigerator, and coated with a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. They were stored with a pallet of incomplete manuals and schematics for the tape drives, along with hard copies of data related to the lunar images. Meanwhile, the tapes were stored safely in a climate-controlled warehouse belonging to JPL. There were about 1500 tapes, all packed into boxes, stacked four deep on pallets, and shrink-wrapped.

After becoming interested in the project, Wingo and Cowing spent about a year looking for funding, facilities, documentation and expertise. They found expertise in the person of Ken Zin, an Army veteran who has a lifetime of experience in working with analog tape machines, who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area.

NASA was prepared to release the tapes to the custody of Wingo and Co., but they required that the tapes be stored in a government facility. Locating the tapes near Zin's residence lead the team to seek out facilities at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Other advantages to the location are that Ampex, the company that built the tape drives, is still operating just 12 miles up the road, retired employees live in the area, and a collection of Ampex Corporation documentation is located at nearby Stanford University.

In April 2008, Wingo and Cowing rented two Budget trucks, loaded up the tape drives and documentation into one truck, and loaded the pallets of magnetic tape into the second. At Ames, the Lunar Science Institute had just opened, and was prepared to assist the team in finding physical facilities. Since the team required a facility with proper heating and cooling and a sink, the many vacant buildings were whittled down to two: a barber shop, and a McDonald's that had closed mere weeks before they arrived. Since the barber shop was relatively small, using it would require that the tapes be stored at a remote warehouse. On the other hand, the McDonald's was much larger, had good lighting, adequate power and air conditioning, excellent parking and decent bathrooms. It turned out to need some improvements such as upgraded Internet access and electrical wiring, since the installed wiring was not designed to power racks of equipment requiring 5 kW (the equivalent of fifty 100 watt light bulbs) out in the dining area.

By July 2008, the team had moved into the McDonald's, now dubbed "McMoon's". The first task was to methodically disassemble and wash the parts of the tape drives. Meanwhile, Ken Zin began testing the systems of the disk drives and making lists of devices to replace and refurbish.

Marketing and recruiting allies

Dennis Wingo plunged into the management of the project: ordering parts, managing funds, searching surplus yards for equipment, researching refurbishing companies, and recruiting allies to the project. He began sending out an email newsletter, which was later converted to a blog, MoonViews.com, and posting photos to the project's Facebook page. Student interns from nearby San Jose State University were recruited and the team requested help from retired employees of Ampex and from blog writers with audiences that might be able to help. Every day there seemed to be a new visitor to McMoon's, such as Dr. Lisa Gaddis from the USGS project to digitize the Lunar Orbiter film, and Charlie Byrne, who wrote the memo recommending the Lunar Orbiter data be stored on magnetic tape. The project was reported in the L.A. Times, ComputerWorld, National Geographic, the Associated Press, American Libraries, the local news, and numerous blogs. Included in every news story was the message that the images are a vital piece of history, but more than this, they contain scientific data of a time and place and quality that has not been repeated. These are images that can assist in the current research about the Moon and the climate of the Earth. There may even be other lost data from the same era recorded using the same tape drives that could benefit from the efforts of the LOIRP team.

Media and metadata

Shortly after moving into McMoon's, a group of students was recruited to remove all the tapes from the boxes, and put the tapes in some sort of order. Each Memorex tape takes about an hour to run on the tape drive, and holds one high-resolution image and one medium-resolution image of the same location. Each reel has been labeled, wrapped in a clear plastic bag, and enclosed in a metal tin, which is sealed with fluorescent yellow tape. Additional labels have been placed on the outside of the tin; each tape is labeled with a code that usually consists of two letters and two numbers, for example: MT_19, WT_45, and GT_46. The labeling does not correspond to the numbering scheme that was assigned to the images, and there is no documentation that shows how the two numbering schemes line up. One of the student interns realized that the first letter indicates which ground station recorded the signal: "M" indicates that the tape was recorded in Madrid, Spain; "W" indicates that the tape was recorded in Woomera, Australia; and "G" indicates that the tape was recorded in Goldstone, California. This guess was confirmed when the team listened to the audio track at the beginning of a few of the tapes, wherein the operator of the ground station recites information about the tape and the recording. On tapes marked with an "M", the operator has a distinctly Latin accent; on tapes marked with a "W", the operator has a distinctly Australian accent.

There are many other confusing problems with the tapes. Each tape is supposed to hold a complete pair of images, but some contain just a few minutes of audio signal, and some contain the same tiny portion of an image, over and over. In the early stages of the project, the team wanted to rescue images that have the most value and impact, but they found that it was very time intensive to find images in this disordered array of tapes.

Hardware and funding

In a completed and working magnetic tape drive system, the tape-drive heads apply a very specific magnetic field to the tape; the tape then induces a change in electrical current, which is captured. The data from the Lunar Orbiter tapes is then run through a demodulator, and through an analog-to-digital converter so that it can be fed into a computer for digital processing. Each image is divided up into strips on the tape, so the computer is used to bring the strips together to create a whole image. Before even beginning the project, the team evaluated the risks and determined that there were two: one was that the tapes had deteriorated to the point where they could not be read; the second was that the tape drives would not be able to read the tapes. The milestones of the project were developed to test these risks as soon as possible with the least amount of money spent.

Once the project started in earnest in July 2008, results came quickly. In only a couple of weeks, the first tape drive had been powered up, although it was clear that many parts still needed to be replaced. Another week of cleaning and testing revealed that among the four drives and batches of spare parts there were enough good power supplies to run one of the tape drives, and there was at least one working head for the drive. The head is the mechanism that touches the tape and reads and writes data, so it is absolutely critical; in the case of the Ampex FR-900 tape drives, the heads were not manufactured after 1974, cannot be replaced, and can only be refurbished at great expense by a single small company.

After another month of repairing and replacing parts, testing and tuning mechanisms, the project got the first solid result that the tapes were good. Each tape starts with a short standard-format audio clip of the operator, and the tape drives were able to read the audio signal. (Hear a sample of the audio.) This does not use the video heads that are needed to read the Lunar Orbiter data off the tape, but this demonstrated that the tapes had not deteriorated and that many of the sub-systems of the tape drive were in good working order.

The documentation for the tape drives was substantially incomplete, which kept the team from understanding the right way to repair, maintain, and use the tape drives. The search for documentation has been extensive and usually disappointing, as it often turns out that retired or elderly engineers have just recently cleaned out their garages. Posting to a blog, Dennis Wingo said, "I cannot tell you how many times we have heard similar stories of recently tossed manuals over the last six months". At just the right moment the team heard from a friend of a friend that a mother lode of maintenance documentation stored on aperture cards (microfilm embedded in computer punch cards) had been saved by the retired head of Ampex field engineering. This documentation would make it possible for the team to understand the correct procedures for repairing the tape drives and aligning the mechanics

At this point in the restoration, the demodulation of the tapes had become the biggest issue. The team wasn't sure if the demodulation board that came with the system was the correct one, if they needed a different one, or if they needed this one and another one. At the same time, they discovered a tape, which, from the audio clip at the start, sounded as if it contained a demodulated recording of one of the images. This was a lucky break, as it meant that a demodulator would not be needed to generate images from this tape. If the team could rescue this image, the project would prove "that the drive can be refurbished to the point of reliably playing a tape back". Work continued, and the team coined the term "technoarchealogy" to describe the process of researching which tape contained what image. Posts to the blog continued, but with little substance until suddenly NASA announced a press conference.

On November 13, 2008 NASA held a press conference and announced that they were releasing the first image that had been restored: a striking image, taken on August 23, 1966, of the Earth as viewed, for the very first time, from the Moon. This was a major milestone that showed that the tapes and the tape drives were both good. Preliminary analysis showed that the image had "four times the dynamic range of the ... [original] film image and up to twice the ultimate resolution". The NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) had sponsored the team so far with a small grant of $100,000. With these results, more funds were released--another $150,000 to complete a major restoration of the drives and to create the demodulation hardware needed for the other tapes. Gregory Schmidt, deputy director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute at Ames said, "Now that we've demonstrated the capability to retrieve images, our goal is to complete the tape drives' restoration and move toward retrieving all of the images on the remaining tapes".

Within a month, the next round of funding came through and restoration began in earnest. The heads, capstan and rotor motors were being restored by two different companies. New documentation about the demodulation was discovered, and the team began building a board by hand. Custom belts were being manufactured to replace the old ones. Software was being written to process the digital images. The biggest expense was the heads, which cost around $30,000 to be refurbished.

On March 21, 2009, the team announced that they had rescued an un-demodulated image from one of the tapes, using the newly perfected demodulation system. The image, of the crater Copernicus, is from the Lunar Orbiter 2 spacecraft taken on November 24, 1966. NASA Scientist Martin Swetnick was quoted in a Time magazine article from 1966, calling this image "one of the great pictures of the century".

By April, the team had digitized 30 images. A couple of months later an article in ComputerWorld revealed that the project had a new grant of $600,000, and had hopes to completely digitize all the images by February 2010. Most of the new funding came from NASA, but about 10% came from other donors. This new funding allowed the team to restore a second tape drive to full operation by November 2009, which made the process of restoring the images that much faster. Currently the biggest limitation to processing the images quickly is not the old tape drives, but the new Apple computers needed to convert the digital data into images. As of January 2010, the team is about to acquire a new Apple computer with 8 processors, which they hope will speed the process.

Future preservation

After each image is processed and restored, the data will be sent to the Planetary Data System (PDS), a digital repository for NASA mission and ground support data. The PDS was co-founded by Nancy Evans as a way to preserve and provide access to planetary datasets.

References

1. "The Moon View". New York Times. 2008-11-18. Retrieved 2008-11-20. When the photograph was published, in 1966, it looked like a newsprint version of a high-contrast snapshot from space, a stark scattering of whites and blacks. The data from the lunar orbiter was stored on old analog tape drives. Now, imaging experts at NASA have digitized those drives — mining data that could not be recovered when they were first made — and produced a high-resolution version of that historic photograph. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
2. ^ Johnson, J. (2009, March 22). NASA's early lunar images, in a new light. The Los Angeles Times. Posted to http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/22/nation/na-lunar22
3. Weiss, J.C. (2008, November 22). 40 year old space photos? Posted to http://www.weissblog.com/2008/11/22/40-year-old-space-photos/
4. Weller, L., Becker, B., Archinal, B., Bennett, A., Cook, D., Gaddis, L., et al. (2007). USGS Lunar Orbiter digitization project: updates and status. Retrieved December 3, 2009 from http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2007/pdf/2092.pdf
5. Soderman, T., & NLSI staff. (2009, January 21). Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project. Retrieved September 18, 2009 from http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov/articles/lunar-orbiter-image-recovery-project
6. Cowing & Wingo, November 13, 2008, http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/11/image_collection_from_a_garage.html
7. Ampex Corporation Records finding aid, http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/ft4s2004rn
8. ^ Wood, L. (2009, June 29). The lost NASA tapes: restoring lunar images after 40 years in the vault. ComputerWorld. Available at http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9134771/The_lost_NASA_tapes_Restoring_lunar_images_after_40_years_in_the_vault?taxonomyId=12&pageNumber=5
9. National Geographic (AP). (2009, May 5). Retrieved from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090505-moon-photos-video-ap.html
10. Associated Press. (2009, April 20). First Moon Images No Longer Lost in Space. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwbw1vhtZ0g
11. Landgraf, G. (2009, September 16). Archivist Saves, Restores Original NASA Moon Pictures. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2009/september2009/nasaimagessaved091609.cfm
12. ^ KTVU. (2009, April 10). Old NASA tapes reveal stunning new Moon images; resolution unparalleled. Available from http://www.ktvu.com/news/19153582/detail.html
13. Leibsson, S. (2008, November 14). NASA and LOIRP Return to the Moon, 42 Years Later. Recovering Lunar Orbiter Images. Retrieved from http://www.edn.com/blog/980000298/post/1860036586.html
14. Brian. (2009, April 16). A NASA Archivist, a Junkyard Warrior, and a Technoarchaeologist Save Lunar History. Retrieved from http://olddirt.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/a-nasa-archivist-a-junkyard-warrior-and-a-technoarchaeologist-save-lunar-history/
15. Digital Curation Centre. (2009, April 15). Heroic data recovery story: 40-year old lunar orbital data. Retrieved from http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/heroic-data-recovery-story-40-year-old.html
16. Cowing & Wingo (July 2008). MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/07/
17. David, L. (2009, April 1). Old Moon images get modern makeover. Available at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,511864,00.html Also at http://www.livescience.com/space/090331-st-moon-views-makeover.html
18. ^ Bourzac, K. (2009). Photo essay: surface restoration. Technology Review, 112(5), 34-41.
19. Cowing & Wingo (August 19, 2008). MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/08/
20. Cowing & Wingo (July 16, 2008). MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/07/16_july_2008_loirp_status.html
21. Cowing & Wingo (July 23, 2008) Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/07/23_july_2008_loirp_status.html
22. Cowing & Wingo (September 3, 2008). MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/09/3_september_2008_loirp_status.html
23. Wingo, D. (2009, April 2). [Comment to blog post]. Available at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/01/help-needed-to-recover-old-satellite-imagery/
24. Cowing & Wingo (August 4, 2008) MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/08/4_august_2008_loirp_status.html
25. Cowing & Wingo (August 19, 2008). MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/08/19_august_2008_loirp_status.html
26. Cowing & Wingo (September 3, 2008). MoonViews. http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/09/3_september_2008_loirp_status.html
27. Wingo, D., & Cowing, K.L. (2009). Recovering high resolution lunar orbiter images from analog tape. Retrieved December 3, 2009 from http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/2517.pdf
28. NASA. (2008, November 13). Correction – NASA restores historic Lunar Orbiter image. Posted to http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2008/08_99AR.html
29. Cowing & Wingo (January 20, 2009). MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2009/01/lunar_orbiter_image_recovery_p.html
30. Space: a new look at Copernicus. (1966, December 9). Time. Available at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,898477,00.html
31. Cowing & Wingo (November 12, 2009). MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2009/11/loirp_works_to_bring_second_fr.html
32. "Repaired Data Drives Restoring the Moon". CollectSpace.com. November 14, 2008. Retrieved February 5, 2010.

External links

• Official website
• McMoon's at Ames Research Center: 37°24′34″N 122°03′17″W / 37.4094°N 122.0548°W / 37.4094; -122.0548
• "NASA's early lunar images, in a new light" at LA Times, March 22, 2009
• "Repaired data drives restoring the Moon" at CollectSpace, November 14, 2008
• "RECOVERING HIGH RESOLUTION LUNAR ORBITER IMAGES FROM ANALOG TAPE", D. R. Wingo and K. L. Cowing, 40th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, 2009
• "Tape Recording of Lunar Orbiter Pictures", C. J. Byrne, July 6, 1965

• Lunar Orbiter program