[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 62 (Monday, April 27, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E985]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           HONORING THE LUNAR ORBITER IMAGE RECOVERY PROJECT

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                            HON. ZOE LOFGREN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, April 27, 2009

  Ms. ZOE LOFGREN of California. Madam Speaker, I rise to commend the 
Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project and all those who have contributed 
their time and effort to ensure that historic images and vital data 
from the Lunar Orbiter missions of the 1960s are not lost to future 
generations.
  In 1965, Charles Byrne, an engineer with Bellcomm, Inc., had the 
foresight to propose that NASA record data from the Lunar Orbiter 
missions onto tape recorders. NASA agreed and the images returned from 
the Lunar Orbiters were backed up on AMPEX FR-900 tape drives. To date, 
these images are some of highest resolution images we have of the Moon. 
Those images include a high-resolution version of ``Earthrise,'' the 
first picture of the Earth from the Moon's vantage point. Time Magazine 
has called this image ``the photo of the century.'' The tapes also 
contain the first stereo imagery of the Moon's surface. Indeed, these 
are some of the best images of the Moon ever taken, far superior from 
those received from the Hubble telescope.
  Astonishingly, all of the images stored on the 1,500 14-inch diameter 
tape reels were nearly destroyed. With its focus turned to the Apollo 
mission, NASA saw little further use for the tapes. Fortunately, Nancy 
Evans, co-founder of NASA Planetary Data Systems, convinced her 
superiors at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to retain the tapes. Evans 
also salvaged three refrigerator-sized FR-900 tape drives, which she 
stored in her own garage for two decades. Evans and Mark Nelson, of 
Caltech, managed to get a few tape drives running but their project 
ultimately folded. NASA turned down her requests for assistance after 
placing an estimate of $6 million on the cost to restore the data.
  Fortunately, Evans' efforts caught the attention of Dennis Wingo and 
Keith Cowing, both of whom have been focused on space exploration for 
many years. They arranged to move the tapes and drives to NASA's Ames 
Research Center in Mountain View, California. Ames' director, Peter 
Worden, arranged for them to store the equipment in an old abandoned 
McDonalds, which they jokingly referred to as ``McMoon's.'' Wingo and 
Cowing began working with Ken Zin, an army veteran, to get the drives 
up and running. NASA contributed $100,000 to the efforts. Cowing 
invested his own money in the project and the team enlisted the support 
of local students to recover the images.
  There is still a long way to go to complete this project but the 
public's interest in it is more than just a matter of historical 
record. The images have the potential to push NASA's climate data back 
a full decade. And just as the Lunar Orbiter images provided data 
crucial to safely landing our first astronauts on the moon, those same 
images will assist the current efforts of the Lunar Reconnaissance 
Orbiter mission by providing a baseline for understanding the changes 
to the Moon between the 1960s and present day.
  As with the Lunar Orbiter's images themselves, the efforts of those 
who have devoted themselves to this project should not go unnoticed or 
unrecorded. Although space exploration is a vast, complicated 
enterprise, it ultimately relies on individuals who have the vision and 
imagination to move us forward. The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery 
Project is an example of that kind of vision and imagination, and those 
who have contributed to the Project and to preceding efforts surely 
deserve our gratitude.

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