Images via, unless noted otherwiseAt an abandoned McDonald’s in Mountain View, California, lovingly nicknamed “McMoons,” techno-archaeologists have finished recording the content of 1,500 analogue magnetic tapes from the lunar obiter probes sent into space in the 1960's. Now, all of the content, processed in long vertical strips, are being stitched together to reconstruct the first black and white photographs of the moon’s surface in higher resolution than ever before. It only took five years to capture the forty-year-old film that physically stretches on for miles.
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Between 1966 and 1967, NASA launched five unmanned orbiters on a reconnaissance mission to scope out landing sites for future lunar exploration. The imaging system onboard was purely analogue— no other technology could produce high quality images, so they opted to use a film camera. Two dual lenses would place their frame exposures onto 70 mm film, each lens covering a certain range of area. At the same time, an electro-optical sensor was measuring the spacecraft velocity, so that the film could be moved during exposure, in order to ensure a clear shot. Then, chemically processed in the spacecraft’s very own darkroom, the film was scanned with a light beam and transmitted back to Earth. The data was processed onto negatives, and the resulting images successfully informed scientists about the surface of the moon. In a moment perhaps more lucky than ingenious, technologists also happened to record the images onto magnetic tapes as they were captured on the kinescopic screens. But it wasn’t too important back then, because the tapes were left mostly untouched until 2007.
By then, four out of five sets of tapes had been recycled or destroyed; the only one left intact was found in the garage of former NASA employee Nancy Evans, on her horse ranch. What was so special about the original tapes? The film, being 70mm wide, had a dynamic range of 1000:1, or about 10 bits. But the way the negatives were processed on Earth, onto 35mm film, the resulting image was of four times lower quality, about a range of 250:1 one, or 8 bits. Back then, there was no way to directly translate that data in its original resolution. Now, however, Dennis Wingo, a project lead who describes his job as “techno-archeology,” is reviving the film using new technologies, in order that we may preserve it for the future.
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The Lunar Orbit Image Recovery Project is a critical example of how antiquated technologies can today be reverse-engineered and extracted for data. The experience and insight gained will set a precedent for other projects of this scope: in recent news, Wingo, along with Keith Cowing, is applying the knowledge gained here to an epic mission that hopes to rescuing important solar data from the "zombie” spacecraft, a NASA solar explorer that’s long been abandoned.
Dive into Extraterrestrial, below, the third part of a documentary series helmed by the Hillman Photography Initiative of the Carnegie Museum of Art, to get an exclusive look at the intricacies of the Lunar Orbit Image Recovery Project, and the potential for techno-archaeology. The video series, entitled The Invisible Photograph rediscovers photography that’s hidden, unrecognizable, or forgotten, and cracks it open with new production, distribution and consumption processes.
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Between 1966 and 1967, NASA launched five unmanned orbiters on a reconnaissance mission to scope out landing sites for future lunar exploration. The imaging system onboard was purely analogue— no other technology could produce high quality images, so they opted to use a film camera. Two dual lenses would place their frame exposures onto 70 mm film, each lens covering a certain range of area. At the same time, an electro-optical sensor was measuring the spacecraft velocity, so that the film could be moved during exposure, in order to ensure a clear shot. Then, chemically processed in the spacecraft’s very own darkroom, the film was scanned with a light beam and transmitted back to Earth. The data was processed onto negatives, and the resulting images successfully informed scientists about the surface of the moon. In a moment perhaps more lucky than ingenious, technologists also happened to record the images onto magnetic tapes as they were captured on the kinescopic screens. But it wasn’t too important back then, because the tapes were left mostly untouched until 2007.
By then, four out of five sets of tapes had been recycled or destroyed; the only one left intact was found in the garage of former NASA employee Nancy Evans, on her horse ranch. What was so special about the original tapes? The film, being 70mm wide, had a dynamic range of 1000:1, or about 10 bits. But the way the negatives were processed on Earth, onto 35mm film, the resulting image was of four times lower quality, about a range of 250:1 one, or 8 bits. Back then, there was no way to directly translate that data in its original resolution. Now, however, Dennis Wingo, a project lead who describes his job as “techno-archeology,” is reviving the film using new technologies, in order that we may preserve it for the future.
The Lunar Orbit Image Recovery Project is a critical example of how antiquated technologies can today be reverse-engineered and extracted for data. The experience and insight gained will set a precedent for other projects of this scope: in recent news, Wingo, along with Keith Cowing, is applying the knowledge gained here to an epic mission that hopes to rescuing important solar data from the "zombie” spacecraft, a NASA solar explorer that’s long been abandoned.