WordPress Remove Comments Closed

Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 8:23 am

wordpress remove comments closed

Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project

Background

The tapes of the Lunar Orbiter missions were mainly used to locate the landing sites Apollo manned missions, and once the missions were over, the data has been largely forgotten. The tapes were stored carefully for 20 years in Maryland. When the tapes are released back to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, around 1986, the decision to dispose of the tapes were in charge archiving Nancy Evans. Instinctively, he decided that the tapes should be preserved. Recalled, could not dispose of this material morally.

Within a few years Nancy Evans was able to start a small project with funding from NASA and a little help from Mark Nelson at Caltech. Eventually, they managed to find four rare Ampex FR-900 tape drives specialized drivesighly only been used by government agencies such as FAA, Air Force and NASA. Over time, they also collected documentation and spare parts for the tape drives of surplus government. The project succeeded in getting the raw data from the analog tapes, but in order to generate the images, they found they needed specialized demodulation hardware that had been used by the Lunar Orbiter program, which no longer existed. He tried to get funding from NASA or private sources to build the hardware, but without success. Over time, both Nancy and Mark Nelson Evans went on to other projects, while the tape drives in Nancy Evans sat garage.

In 2005, Evans was about 70 years old, getting ready to retire, and ready to get rid of the tape drivesopefully a project to recover data from tapes. One day, Dennis Wingo, president of the aerospace engineering firm and a veteran SkyCorp long-term space and computing technologies, was surfing the Internet and found a white paper on Nancy Evans of the project, and quickly became interested. I knew I could gather the technical skills to address the management of the renewal of tape drives, he could find contacts at NASA, and most importantly, he knew that the moon was becoming a hot property again. Wingo said, knew the value of tape drives and tapes. Another group thought the same, writing the Future lunar missions have revitalized the community and renewed interest in moon in the Lunar Orbiter data.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was ready to go to the moon in 2009, and one of his main goals was to determine the risk to people working on the surface of the moon. The LRO will create images of the surface could be compared with the higher resolution images taken from the Moon during the Apollo era. The original Lunar Orbiter images are higher resolution images Moon, who had been brought to the LRO began taking pictures in the fall of 2009. The images of the lunar orbiter would be of great value to scientists studying changes in the surface of the moon.

Expertise and facilities

February 2007 was the first time that Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing, a former employee NASA, saw the four FM-900 Ampex tape drives, which had been stored in garage Nancy Evans crowded next to a chicken coop. Each unit was about 6 feet tall, 3 meters wide, deep as a refrigerator, covered with a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. That were stored in a palette of incomplete manuals and schematics for the units tape, along with copies of the data related to images of the moon. Meanwhile, the tapes are stored securely in an air-conditioned warehouse belonging to JPL. There about 1,500 tapes, all packed in boxes, stacked on pallets in depth four, and packaged.

After interest in the project, Wingo and Cowing spent about a year looking for funding, equipment, documentation and experience. They found experience in the person of Ken Zin, an Army veteran has a lifetime of experience in working with analog tape machines, living in the Bay of San Francisco.

NASA prepared to release the tapes to custody of Wingo and company, but requires that the tapes are stored in a government facility. Location of the tapes near the residence to take the team Zin looking for facilities in the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Other advantages of the location that Ampex, the company which built tape drives, is still operating at only 12 kilometers from the road, retired employees live in the area, and a collection of documents Ampex Corporation, is located at nearby Stanford University.

In April 2008, Wingo and Budget Cowing rented two trucks, loaded to the tape drives and documentation in a truck and loaded pallets of tapes in the second. In Ames, the Lunar Science Institute had just opened, and prepared to help the team find the physical facilities. Since the computer requires a heating and cooling sink, many vacant buildings was reduced to two: a hairdresser, and McDonald had closed just weeks before they arrived. Since the salon was relatively small, which require that tapes are stored in a remote depot. On the other hand, McDonald was much larger, had good lighting, adequate food and air conditioning, parking and excellent health services. It turned out it needs some improvements such as Internet access and upgraded electrical wiring, and installed the wiring was not designed to racks of computers that require 5 kW (equivalent to fifty bulbs of 100 watts of light) in the dining area.

By July 2008, the team had moved to McDonald, now dubbed cMoons. The first task was to remove methodically and thoroughly wash the parts of the tape drives. Meanwhile, Ken Zin began testing systems for disk drives and make a list of devices to replace and renew.

Marketing and recruitment of allies

Dennis Wingo sank in project management, parts ordering, management funds, looking for surplus meters for the team investigating the companies for renewal, and recruiting allies for the project. He began to send a e-mail newsletter, which later became a blog, MoonViews.com and publish photos on Facebook the project page. Student interns from the nearby University of San Jose were recruited and the team asked for assistance to retirees of Ampex and bloggers with the public who may be able to help. Every day there seemed be a new visitor to McMoon, such as Dr. Lisa Gaddis of the USGS project to digitize the film Lunar Orbiter, and Charlie Byrne, who wrote the note of recommendation data from Lunar Orbiter be stored on magnetic tape. The project was published in the Los Angeles Times, ComputerWorld, National Geographic, The Associated Press, U.S. libraries, local news, and numerous blogs. Included in each story was the message that the images are a vital piece of history, but this, containing the scientific data of a time and place and the quality has not been repeated. These are images that can assist in current research on the Moon Earth's climate. Even there may be other lost data from the same period recorded tape drives that could benefit from it the team's efforts LOIRP.

Media and metadata

Shortly after moving to McMoon, a group of students was recruited to remove all the tape boxes, and put the tapes in some order. Each Memorex tape lasts about an hour to run the tape drive, and has a high image resolution and half resolution image the same locality. Each roll was called, wrapped in a plastic bag, and locked in a metal can, which is sealed with tape in fluorescent yellow. Additional labels have been placed on the outside of the can, 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 images, and there is no documentation showing how the two numbering systems from above. One of the interns noticed that the first letter indicates that the ground station signal recorded: "M" indicates that the tape was recorded Madrid, Spain, "W" indicates that the tape was recorded in Woomera, Australia, and "G" indicates that the tape was recorded at Goldstone, California. This assumption was confirmed when the team listened to the audio track in the beginning of some of the tapes, in which the operator recites the ground station information on the tape recording. In tapes marked with an "M" the operator has a strong Latin accent on tapes marked "W", the operator has a strong Australian accent.

There are many other problems of confusion with the tapes. Each tape is supposed to have a complete pair of images, but some contain just minutes from the audio signal, and some contain the same small portion of an image, again and again. In the early stages of the project, the team wanted rescue images that have the greatest value and impact, but found it was very time intensive to find the images in this series disorderly tapes.

Hardware and funding

In a system work completed and the magnetic tape drive, the tape drive heads to apply a very specific magnetic field on the tape, the tape induces a change in electrical current that is captured. The data tapes from the Lunar Orbiter run through a demodulator, and through an analog-digital converter so that it can be entered into a computer for digital processing. Each image is divided into strips of tape, so the equipment is used to bring the strips to create a complete picture. Before even starting the project team to assess the risks and determined that there were two: one was that the tapes were deteriorated to the point that you can not read, and the second is that the tape drives would not be able to read the tapes. Project milestones have been developed to test these risks as soon as possible with the least amount of money spent.

Once the project was formally launched in July 2008, the results came quickly. In just a couple of weeks, the first tape drive was on, although it was clear that in many parts still needed to be replaced. Another week of cleaning and tests revealed that among the four units and lots of spare parts were not the power supply good enough to run one of the tape drives, and had at least one working head for the unit. The head is the mechanism that plays the tape and reads and writes data, so it is absolutely essential, in the case of Ampex FR-900 units tape, the heads were not manufactured after 1974 can not be replaced, and can only be renewed at a high cost for a small business only.

After a month of repairs and replacement of parts, testing and adjustment mechanisms, the project was the first solid result that the tapes were good. Each tape begins with a brief audio clip of the standard format of the operator, and tape drives can read the audio signal. (Listen to an audio.) It does not use head video are needed to read data from Lunar Orbiter tape, but this shows that the tapes had not deteriorated and that many systems sub-unit tape were in good working order.

Documentation of the tape drive was substantially incomplete, which kept the team understand the correct way to repair, maintain and use the tape drives. The search of the literature has been extensive and generally disappointing, as is often that engineers have just retired or older people to clean their garages. Post a blog, Dennis Wingo said, "I can not tell you how many times have we heard similar stories manuals recently launched in the last six months. "On cue the news team of a friend of a friend than a mother lode of maintenance documentation stored on aperture cards (microfilm integrated into the computer punch cards) had been saved by the retired head of field engineering Ampex. This documentation makes it possible for the team to understand the correct procedures for the repair of tape drives and mechanical alignment

At this point in the restoration, demodulation of the tapes had become a major problem. The team was not sure if the demodulation board that comes with the system was correct, if you need one different, or if you need it and others. At the same time, they found a tape, since the audio clip at the start, it looked as if it contained a recording demodulated one of the images. This was a stroke of luck, as it meant a demodulator would not be necessary to generate images of this film. If the team could rescue this image, the project would prove "that the unit can be renovated to the point of reliable playback of a tape again." The work continued and the team coined the term "technoarchealogy" to describe the research process that the tape contained what image. Posts on the blog continues, but with little substance until it suddenly announced at a NASA press conference.

On November 13, 2008 NASA held a press conference and announced that were launching the first image had been restored: a striking image, taken on August 23, 1966, the Earth as seen for the first time since the moon. This was an important milestone which revealed that the tapes and tape drives were both good. Preliminary analysis showed that the image had "four times the dynamic range image [Original] movie and up .. twice the final resolution "of the NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) has sponsored the team so far with a small $ 100,000 grant with these results, more funds were released - another $ 150,000 to complete a major restoration of the units and to create hardware necessary for demodulating other tapes. Gregory Schmidt, deputy director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute at Ames said: "Now that demonstrated the ability of high recover images, our goal is to complete the restoration of tape drives and move towards the recovery of all the images of the films that are " .

Within a month, the next round of financing and came through the restoration began in earnest. The motors of the head, vane and rotor being restored by two different companies. New documentation on the demodulation is discovered, and the team began to build a table with his hand. Belts usual were being manufactured to replace the old ones. Software was being written to process digital images. The biggest expense was the head, which cost about $ 30,000 to be reformed.

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

In April, the team had 30 digitized images . A couple of months later, an article in ComputerWorld showed that the project had a further grant of $ 600,000, and had hoped to completely digitize all images in February 2010. Most of the new funding came from NASA, but about 10% came from other donors. This new funding allowed restore the team to a second tape drive to full operation in November 2009, which made the restoration process images much faster. Today the main limitation for rapid image processing is not the old tape drive, but the new Apple computer is needed to convert digital data in pictures. In January 2010, the team is about to buy a new Apple computer with 8 processors, which they hope will accelerate the process.

Preservation future

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

External Links

Official website

"Principles of NASA, the moon image in a new light" in the LA Times, March 22, 2009

"Repair units of data restoration of the Moon "in collectSPACE, November 14, 2008

"Lunar Orbiter RECOVERY HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES Analog tape, "DR Wingo and KL Cowing, 40th Conference of Lunar and Planetary Science, 2009

"The tape recording of the Lunar Orbiter Images "CJ Byrne, July 6, 1965

References

^ "The moon seen." New York Times. 18/11/2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19wed3.html. Accessed on 20/11/2008. "When the photograph was published in 1966 looked like a newspaper version of a high-contrast image from space dial dispersion of whites and blacks. Data from the lunar orbiter was stored in the old analog tape drives. Now, experts at NASA's image have been digitized Data mining is the engine that could not be recovered when first made and presented a high resolution version of the historic photograph. "

Abcd ^ Johnson, J. (2009, March 22). First NASA lunar images, a new light. The Los Angeles Times. Posted at http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/22/nation/na-lunar22

^ Weiss, JC (2008, November 22). 40 years old, photos of space? Posted at http://www.weissblog.com/2008/11/22/40-year-old-space-photos/

^ Weller, L., Becker, B., Archinal, B., Bennett, A. Cook, D., Gaddis, L., et al. (2007). USGS Lunar Orbiter Digitization Project changes and the state. Accessed December 03, 2009 from http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2007/pdf/2092.pdf

^ Soderman, T., and staff NLSI. (2009, January 21). Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery of the project. Retrieved September 18, 2009 in http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov/articles/lunar-orbiter-image-recovery-project

^ Cowing, and Wingo, November 13, 2008, http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/11/image_collection_from_a_garage.html

Ampex Corporation Records ^ find help, http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/ft4s2004rn

^ Abc wooden, L. (2009, June 29). The lost tapes of the NASA lunar image restoration after 40 years in the vault. ComputerWorld. Available

^ National Geographic (AP). (2009, May 5). Retrieved from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090505-moon-photos-video-ap.html

^ Associated Press. (2009, April 20). First images of the Moon is not lost in space. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwbw1vhtZ0g

^ Landgraf, G. (2009, September 16). Archivist save, restore original NASA moon photos. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2009/september2009/nasaimagessaved091609.cfm

^ Ab KTVU. (2009, April 10). NASA's old tapes reveal stunning pictures of the new moon, the unprecedented resolution. Available http://www.ktvu.com/news/19153582/detail.html

^ Leibsson, S. (2008, November 14). LOIRP NASA and return to the moon 42 years later. Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery. Retrieved from http://www.edn.com/blog/980000298/post/1860036586.html

^ Brian. (2009, April 16). An archivist at NASA, a Junkyard Warrior, and a Technoarchaeologist Save the lunar history. Retrieved from

^ Digital Center Healing. (2009, April 15). Heroic story of data recovery: 40 years of age, lunar orbital data. Retrieved from http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2009/04/heroic-data-recovery-story-40-year-old.html

^ Bullying and Wingo (July 2008). MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/07/

^ David L. (2009, April 1). Imagery Ancient Moon get modern makeover. Available at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0, 2933,511864,00. Also in http://www.livescience.com/space/090331-st-moon-views-makeover.html Html

^ Ab Bourzac, K. (2009). Gallery: the restoration of the surface. Technology Review, 112 (5), 34-41.

^ Cowing and Wingo (19 of August 2008). MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/08/

^ Cowing and Wingo (July 16, 2008). MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/07/16_july_2008_loirp_status.html

^ Bullying and Wingo (July 23, 2008) Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/07/23_july_2008_loirp_status.html

^ Cowing and Wingo (3 September 2008). MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/09/3_september_2008_loirp_status.html

^ Wingo, D. (2009, April 2). [Comment the blog]. Available http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/01/help-needed-to-recover-old-satellite-imagery/

^ Cowing and Wingo (August 4, 2008) MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/08/4_august_2008_loirp_status.html

^ Cowing and Wingo (August 19, 2008). MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/08/19_august_2008_loirp_status.html

^ Cowing and Wingo (September 3, 2008). MoonViews. http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2008/09/3_september_2008_loirp_status.html

^ Wingo, D., & Cowing, KL (2009). The recovery of high-resolution Lunar Orbiter images of analog tape. Retrieved December 3, 2009 in http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/2517.pdf

^ NASA. (2008, November 13). Correction restore the historical image NASA Lunar Orbiter. Posted at http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2008/08_99AR.html

^ Cowing and Wingo (January 20, 2009). MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2009/01/lunar_orbiter_image_recovery_p.html

^ The Space: A New Look at Copernicus. (1966, December 9). Time. Available at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0, 9171,898477,00. Html

^ Cowing and Wingo (November 12, 2009). MoonViews. Retrieved from http://www.moonviews.com/archives/2009/11/loirp_works_to_bring_second_fr.html

^ "Repair data units Restoration of the Moon. "CollectSpace.com. November 14, 2008. Http: / / www.collectspace.com/news/news-111408a.html. Retrieved February 5, 2010.

Categories: Lunar Orbiter program About the Author

I am a professional writer from Cheap On Sales, which contains a great deal of information about automotive heat shield , clear rolling papers, welcome to visit!

WordPress Hide "Comments are closed" text in Post