The Hackers Who Recovered NASA’s Lost Lunar Photos

Wired seems to often not include links directly to whom they're writing about. Check out the LOIRP at http://www.moonviews.com/ and find some of the original images they've recovered... along with lots of other great information.

> Between 1966 and ’67, five Lunar Orbiters snapped pictures onto 70mm film from about 30 miles above the moon. The satellites were sent mainly to scout potential landing sites for manned moon missions. Each satellite would point its dual lens Kodak camera at a target, snap a picture, then develop the photograph. High- and low-resolution photos were then scanned into strips called framelets using something akin to an old fax machine reader.

Before they were doing this, spy satellites would hurl the data back to Earth in a capsule, then use a plane to try and pick it out of mid-air. You had to wear gloves when pulling it into the plane's cargo hold, the capsule would have been searingly hot. One time the recovery crew saw a Soviet submarine in the waves beneath them, from then on they stuck to radio transmissions only.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite)

This have been an ongoing project for many years and a lot of really nice articles have come out over the years. I remember once seeing a lot of nice photographs from the old McDonalds restaurant that showed some nice details about their setup.

The guys even have their own Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Orbiter_Image_Recovery_Pr...

This is amazing work, beautiful pictures. See also, their ISEE-3 Reboot project: http://www.rockethub.com/42228

BusinessWeek (2013) also has a video interview at McMoon:

http://businessweek.com/videos/2013-08-15/abandoned-mcdonald...

Also yelp reviews of the former McD's (map position is wrong)

http://yelp.com/biz/mcdonalds-mountain-view-4

Correct map locating McMoon (green arrow):

http://goo.gl/maps/LhQGw

I found the 2009 Computerworld article worth reading too.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9134771/The_lost_NASA...

So, how do I get a wall-sized print of these?

When you spend that much money on a scientific project (Lunar program) you should get as much PR as possible.

Honestly I'd love to know what tech they used to print the images out back in 1967.