The lost NASA tapes: Restoring lunar images after 40 years in the vault

Jeff Marraccini, Director, Computer Systems, Altair Engineering, Inc. http://www.altair.com/ sent me the below link and it brought back memories of NASA Ames and my getting coffee and a bagel at McDonald's on my walk into Ames. Now no Navy Exchange and McDonalds' is McMoon's.

We are coming up on 40 years since we first landed men on the Moon and it is a good reminder that we need to preserve the data from missions past for those who come later and might want to look at the old data in the light of new technology.

I am guilty of watching old 1 inch magnetic tapes from the Pioneer Venus missions being thrown out because they were contaminated by sewer backups in the basement of the building I worked in. Who would want to watch TV interviews of what was found on Venus?

Take a look at the link below. It is an interesting article. Hope you have the time to read.
- LRK -

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The lost NASA tapes: Restoring lunar images after 40 years in the vault
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9134771
A Mac Pro and 40-year-old tape drives are helping restore the original Lunar Orbiter tapes
By Lamont Wood June 29, 2009 12:01 AM ET
Computerworld - Liquid nitrogen, vegetable steamers, Macintosh workstations and old, refrigerator-size tape drives. These are just some of the tools a new breed of Space Age archeologists is using to sift through the digital debris from the early days of NASA, mining the information in ways unimaginable when it was first gathered four decades ago.

At stake is data that could show Earth's risk of an asteroid strike, shed light on global warming and -- perhaps -- even satisfy those who think the moon landings were a hoax.

The most visible of the archeologists is arguably Dennis Wingo, head of Skycorp Inc., a small aerospace engineering firm in Huntsville, Ala. He's the driving force behind the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, operating out of a decommissioned McDonald's (since dubbed McMoon's) at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. The project's goal is to recover and enhance as many of the original lunar landing images as possible.

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If you like to follow folks on Twitter, ApolloPlus40 is posting twitter as if it was happening back leading up to the Apollo 11 mission.
http://twitter.com/ApolloPlus40
Name ApolloPlus40
Location The Moon
Web http://blogs.nature.com/news/blog/events/apolloplus40/
Bio Nature News twitters the Apollo 11 moon mission as it happened -- 40 years on


Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
Twitter: http://twitter.com/lrkellogg
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