Vintage Moon Photo Project Seeks Public Support

A five-year effort to recover nearly 50-year-old images of the moon is seeking public support to keep the project going.

Since 2008, Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) has been reprocessing data received from five unmanned NASA spacecraft in the 1960s. The Lunar Orbiters, tasked with imaging potential landing sites for the Apollo manned missions that were set to follow, made their own history by taking the first photos from lunar orbit.

Started with funding from volunteers and initially supported financially by NASA, the LOIRP team of retired engineers and scientists, together with students, have recovered and enhanced 600 out of the more than 1,400 images taken by the Lunar Orbiters in 1966 and 1967.