LA Times: An archivist saves the Moon (tapes)
Take a look at that picture. Ah ha, one thinks, one of the famed Earthrise shots brought back by Apollo astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders in 1968. And those are the ones sometimes hailed as the first-ever pictures of Earth as it appears from deep space. But no, this one was taken by a humbler, robotic workhorse, Lunar Orbiter 1, as it scouted landing sites for the astronauts who were to follow.
The LATimes‘s John Johnson Jr. this week provided a paean to the NASA archivist who saved this and many other original pictures and data from destruction by NASA workers faced with bulging warehouses and tons of old recording tape.
This is not, one must note, the first time she’s been given a public hurrah. Here, for instance, is a space.com account from November. Keith Cowing at NASA Watch has a close, personal involvement in this saga. The NYTimes even wrote an editorial saluting the project last year.
The project to mine the data, now ensconced at NASA’s Ames Research Center north of San Jose, is doggedly coaxing ancient, rebuilt tape drives to unleash info from the crumbling old records. Its members recently released a second, sharp, oblique image of the Moon’s Copernicus Crater. Johnson gives it a deserved, good ride.
Grist for the Mill: NASA Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project ;
-CP
