A
Alan Browne
Last night, drowsily watching Discovery's "Daily Planet", there was
mention of a project to digitize photos made of the moon 40 years ago by
two satellites launched in the 60's prior to (and in preparation for)
the Apollo missions.
The satellites orbitted at quite low altitude and phtographed the
surface on B&W 70mm film. Photos were shot when the sun would create
fairly good detail (shaddows)
The film was developed on board the satellite.
Scanned on the satellite.
Transmitted to earth using a facsimile like protocol.
and printed on film again (they showed 35mm strips with a fairly wide
border area). The detail shown was quite crisp (they zoomed in close to
the frames).
These are now being digitized ... in preparation for return to the moon
missions (unmanned in near term and manned around 2020).
Cheers,
Alan.
Further ref:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/L/Lu/Lunar_Orbiter_program.htm
mention of a project to digitize photos made of the moon 40 years ago by
two satellites launched in the 60's prior to (and in preparation for)
the Apollo missions.
The satellites orbitted at quite low altitude and phtographed the
surface on B&W 70mm film. Photos were shot when the sun would create
fairly good detail (shaddows)
The film was developed on board the satellite.
Scanned on the satellite.
Transmitted to earth using a facsimile like protocol.
and printed on film again (they showed 35mm strips with a fairly wide
border area). The detail shown was quite crisp (they zoomed in close to
the frames).
These are now being digitized ... in preparation for return to the moon
missions (unmanned in near term and manned around 2020).
Cheers,
Alan.
Further ref:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/L/Lu/Lunar_Orbiter_program.htm