Dennis Wingo (with some help from Keith Cowing) talks about the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project. This project started with rescuing tapes containing data from the first lunar survey but required repairing tape drives and writing software to decode the data.
Learn about the images they were able to recover and the expertise required to make the repairs, locates parts, etc. This project is housed at a former McDonald's restaurant at NASA Ames, now known as McMoon.
Bio
Keith Cowing
Keith Cowling is editor of NASA Watch, an online publication devoted to the free and uncensored exchange of information on space policy and NASA operations. This website is read regularly within NASA, Congress, and the global space community. Cowing is also editor of SpaceRef.com, an online space news and reference resource.
Dennis Wingo
Dennis Wingo is the author of Moonrush. He is a leader in the commercial exploration of space.
Also science at its best and worst... best when they took these images back in the day, worst, when the interest in the Apollo program decayed so fast that they basically destroyed almost anything they ever made and let many of the samples they collected rot in NASA safes. And at its best again when curious people today do what scientists do every day: "hack" their way towards a solution to retrieve what's left of the treasures.