Newly
restored photographs of the moon's dark south pole, taken by lunar orbiters in
1967, were released this week in anticipation of NASA's planned Thursday launch
of two new probes that will investigate the region in search of underground
ice.
Through the
Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP), experts have scanned and digitally
refurbished nearly 1,800 photographs of the moon that satellites snapped in
1966 and 1967. This week, the project released new versions of images showing permanently shadowed craters at the moon's south pole, a prime target for NASA's new lunar scouts set to launch tomorrow.
Dennis
Wingo, who directs the project, was 6 years old when the first images were
televised. "Even as a small child I was very much a follower of the space
program," he told SPACE.com.
The
orbiters took photographs and developed the film onboard before scanning them
and relaying them to stations around the world. NASA scientists used the images
to plan the Apollo
moon landings. They were recorded on 2-inch analog tape and stored for
posterity. Now, more than 40 years later, Wingo is using the only remaining
tape players capable of extracting those images for digitization. He publishes
the restorations on the Web site Moonviews.com.
A precursor
of the project to restore the tapes began in the 1980s. That attempt stalled
when funds dried up. Twenty years later, Wingo noticed a blog post that
mentioned the tapes. Nancy Evans, co-founder of the NASA Planetary Data System,
had the tape players stored
in a barn and was looking for someone to finish the process she had
started.
"We're
converting them to digital, then processing them on the computer to show them
in their original glory," Wingo said. NASA could later compare the
40-year-old images with those the new probes will gather, he added.
Ice
Mystery
This week's
release of images comes as NASA prepares for the Thursday launch of a new
mission to investigate whether there is water ice on the moon's south pole.
The mission
involves
two probes, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and a pair of crash-landing
impactors, which will be lifted to space by an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket from the
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Liftoff is set for 5:12 p.m. EDT
(2112 GMT).
The lunar
orbiter will map the moon's surface from orbit in unsurpassed resolution,
capturing even the tracks that lunar rovers left behind. Accompanying the
orbiter, NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite will drop
two impactors into the south pole of the moon.
Following
up on data collected by past missions that revealed hydrogen at the poles – a
sign of water – scientists will analyze the debris that explodes from the
impact sites in its search for underground lunar ice.
advertisement
