Ex-NASA 'hackers' use ingenuity, technology to rescue first-ever moon photos

: Former Langley Center Director Floyd Thompson shows Ann Kilgore the "picture of the century." This was the first picture of the earth taken from space on Aug. 23, 1966. (NASA) : Former Langley Center Director Floyd Thompson shows Ann Kilgore the "picture of the century." This was the first picture of the earth taken from space on Aug. 23, 1966. (NASA) Photo: NASA Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project Photo: NASA Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project Image 1 of / 78 Caption Close Ex-NASA 'hackers' use ingenuity, technology to rescue first-ever moon photos 1 / 78 Back to Gallery

When a handful of former NASA employees decided to get serious about retrieving moon photos from 50-year-old analog tapes, they got a lot of negative feedback.

"We were told by professionals it would cost millions, but we did it anyway," said Keith Cowing, co-lead on the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project.

At the end of March, the project celebrated processing the last of about 1,500 photos made by NASA's lunar orbiters in the 1960s. The next phase involves preparing them for submission to the Planetary Data System, a public archive.

Now housed in a converted McDonald's restaurant on NASA property in southern California, the seven-year-old project started with nothing but some 2-inch analog video tapes and no way to play them, Cowing said.

Former NASA employees had talked for a number of year about doing something with the tapes, but the project got going in earnest in 2007 when the organizers discovered there were two old machines that would play them.

"These are the only operational units of their type in the world," Cowing said.

Figuring out how to get them working took a lot of "nontraditional sleuthing," he said.

Some recent news stories have referred to the group as "hackers," which Cowing said is accurate in the sense that they are fixing things up and not afraid to get their hands dirty.

"I call it Dumpster diving for science," he said.