1966 Lunar Orbiter image tapes rescued in LA Times: via AmpexFR-900

[Pontus]

Randy Dawson wrote:
>
>   
>> Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 11:24:20 -0700
>> From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca
>> To: General at invalid.domain
>> Subject: Re: 1966 Lunar Orbiter image tapes rescued in LA Times: via	AmpexFR-900
>>
>> Pontus Pihlgren wrote:
>>     
>>> John Foust wrote:
>>>       
>>>> http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/22/nation/na-lunar22
>>>>
>>>> http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/11/image_collection_from_a_garage.html
>>>>
>>>> http://neverworld.net/lunar/
>>>>
>>>> http://www.thelivingmoon.com/47john_lear/02files/Lunar_Orbiter_Tapes_Found.html
>>>>
>>>> http://twitter.com/lunarOrbiter
>>>>         
>>> Are these the same tapes mentioned here?
>>>
>>> http://thinkingshift.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/the-curious-case-of-lost-nasa-tapes/
>>>
>>> Pretty awesome though, that lady Evans is a real hero!
>>>       
>> Looked like a really fun project to work on. I like the picture of the sleeping
>> bag laid out amidst the stacks of tapes in the "recovery laboratory" (abandoned
>> McDonalds restaurant).
>>
>> There was some mention of the analog tape format but I wish there had been a
>> little more technical write-up of the old equipment and the transfer process
>> and issues they went through.
>>     
>
> The lunar orbiter missing tapes story is not nearly as interesting as the LOST lunar landing tapes in the thinkingshift link above.
> They still have not found these - the images were much better that what we saw.
>
> A little surfing turned up the lunar camera manual:
>
> http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/refer/Notes/gamma.html
>
> The TV telemetry and communications documents are here:
>
> http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-TVDocs.html
> I worked on these recorders - I did moon quake data reduction (Apollo ALSEP) for the University of Texas when NASA shifted priorities to Skylab.  The nuclear powered seismometers were all still functioning and sending live data.  NASA had no use for them anymore, so we took over.  The recording/playback machines were called 'Wideband Instrumentation Recorders' and handled analog data up to 500KHz or so.  They recorded in both FM and direct (baseband) modes.  The recording was of course a digital one, and we recovered the data and transcribed it to digital 7 track on a PDP 15.
>
> We plotted the seismic data on Versatec electrostatic 'wet' type printers.  Whenever we were plotting, and we came upon an 'event' either a moonquake or a meteor strike, the geophysics guys had a field day.  On one occasion, NASA crashed the spent SIV-B stage into the moon, just to see what happened.  The moon is solid, a crystal and no molten core.  Following the impact, it 'rang like a bell' for almost an hour.  We got the bright idea to speed it up a bit, D/A convert it and listen.  Id did indeed sound like a bell...  well more like a cymbal crash.
>
> Randy
>
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I'm waking up an old thread here, but this sounds like related and good
news:

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/110442/WORLD-EXCLUSIVE-NASA-finds-missing-moon-landing-tapes

Not sure how reliable that is, but I hope it is :)

/P