After a trip of over 200,000 miles, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back its first images from the moon - and they look great. 

Kodak supplied the CCD image sensors used in all three cameras of the orbiter, which will ultimately provide images up to 0.5 meters in resolution - about the same as what's available from commercial programs such as Google Earth.  Currently, the LRO is still in its commissioning orbit, where the equipment is first turned on and adjusted, and the orbit is modified to its final trajectory (which today looks more like an ellipse, rather than a circle, around the moon).  But even while these final adjustments are made, the images coming back are still pretty incredible.

Here's one of the first images sent back by the LRO - taken when the orbiter was flying at the edge of the lighted region of the moon (an area of lunar "sunrise" or "sunset").  Because of this, the shadows are a little exaggerated, but it still gives a good idea of the level of detail available from this new instrument.

[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

Since the LRO orbits the moon about once every 2 hours, it's pretty straightforward to image the same location from slightly different angles - making it easy to come up with 3D images of the moon (don't forget to use your 3D glasses):

[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

You can even "fly along" with the LRO in movies that have been made from the series of images it has sent back:

But the clear highlight of the first set of images to come back from the LRO are those of the Apollo landing sites, which came just in time for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing.  These show not only the lunar modules and some scientific equipment left on the moon, but even the trails of astronauts' footprints on the lunar surface:

Apollo 11 lunar module, Eagle.  Image Width:  282 meters (about 925 ft.) [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

It's nice to know that 40 years later, all of these things are right where we left them.

As the orbit stabilizes over the next several weeks, images from the LRO should have two to three times better resolution than the pictures shown here - so future passes over these sites will only produce even sharper images, showing these artifacts in even more detail.  But for now, it's good to know that the cameras on board the LRO are working just as advertised, ready to provide an unprecedented set of close-ups of our nearest neighbor in space. 

As a reminder, there are a lot of different ways you can follow along with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on its mission, including web sites from NASA, the Goddard Space Flight Center, and Arizona State University (where the project team for the cameras is based), as well as accounts on both Facebook and Twitter. 

P.S.  Can't get enough of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter?  Arizona State University has put together a paper model of the LRO you can print up, cut out, and glue together.  Now you've got all the things you need to send your own orbiter to the moon.*

*Launch Rocket not included.

In our own way, each of us is truly a part of history - all of the things we do each day affect the people around us, influencing in some way the course of both our and others' lives.  While all of these things may be important, we also generally understand that some things probably are more important than others - my 8-year-old son may not remember where he left his glasses, but he can recount - with great detail - his plays from little league baseball this summer.  Sometimes, you just know that what you're doing will have a lasting impact - on your family, or an entire community.  Or even the world.  

Art Cosgrove is a Kodak retiree who worked first hand on the Lunar Orbiter program that photographed the moon in the late 60's to search for safe landing locations for the Apollo missions.  Art was part of the Kodak team directly involved in this program, and was there when the first high-resolution images of the moon were received on Earth over 40 years ago.  With last week's anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, I had an opportunity to talk to Art to learn more about the Lunar Orbiters - giving me the chance to have a conversation with someone who really did make history.  


How were you involved in the Lunar Orbiter missions?

To answer that, it probably helps to explain how the Lunar Orbiter sent images of the moon to earth.  It was a three-step process - first, images were captured by the orbiter's camera using film, the film was processed on-board the orbiter, and then the resulting images were scanned and transmitted to earth as a video signal.  Kodak was responsible for the image data received from the orbiters, and provided video engineers to monitor this data as it was received.  I was one of three video engineers working with this data as it was received by one of three Deep Space Network ground receiving stations on Earth - for the first Lunar Orbiter mission, I was at the receiving station in Australia, but also worked at the Spain and California stations for the other Orbiter missions.  


You must have been one of the first people to actually see high-resolution images of the moon's surface - right?

I was - but not in the way you might think.  Remember that the technology then was very different from what is available today - we weren't looking at an image displayed on a monitor, but a raw video signal being sent from the orbiter.  This signal was sent directly to a film recorder, but I would also monitor it on an oscilloscope as it was being received in real time - a flat line was a smooth surface, while "bumps" in the trace corresponded to the edges of craters.  So I could see right away what type of terrain the orbiter was looking at.  After the signal was written to the film recorder, we would process the film and review it before sending it to Rochester - so I saw actual pictures of the moon's surface before almost anyone else, too.  Because I saw these images before they were even sent to NASA, I ended up as one of the first people ever to see an image of the far side of the moon (the side that normally faces away from the Earth). 

How did it feel when you saw the first signals from the first orbiter and knew that knew the entire system was working?

Man, it was exciting!  Really, it's hard to describe the emotions, the pride of knowing that you're involved in this enormous undertaking.  Here I was, a young kid right out of school, now spending 12 - 14 hours a day talking directly to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as these pictures came in.  Knowing that you have a part - a major part - in this, was amazing.  There were certainly other parts of my career where I was excited about the work I was doing, but I never had the level of intensity that I had with this program.  It was a very exciting time in my life, where I was seeing the world, experiencing new cultures - and being a part of this historic undertaking.



Did you appreciate that you were involved in something historic?

Absolutely.  The Lunar Orbiters were considered part of the Apollo program, and everyone understood the importance and significance of that entire effort.  My personal sense was "this is history" - and I was not only living it, but playing a key part in it.

About two years after the last Lunar Orbiter mission, Apollo 11 left the Earth heading for a lunar landing on Tranquility Base - a location that was finalized in a large part based on the information collected by the Lunar Orbiters.  Were you worried about that - did you think that you had collected was good data?

We definitely thought that data from the Orbiters was good.  The images we collected looked pristine, and we had a lot of them.

How important do you think Kodak was in preparing for the Apollo landings?

There really was no one else that could have developed the technology that ended up in the Lunar Orbiters.  Kodak had a lot of unique experience working in systems for aerial reconnaissance (of the Earth), and the Lunar Orbiters were build on the shoulders of that technology.  For example - on an extended space mission, you have to deal with the potential impact of high radiation levels on film.  At that time, no one really knew what those actual effects would be, but Kodak had physicists who had a lot of experience working film, and who were very good at hypothesizing about what would happen in space.  That experience was inside Kodak, and was vital to the successful design of the Orbiter.


What are you doing now?

Keeping very busy!  I retired in early 2006 after over 40 years at Kodak.  During my last years at Kodak, I represented Kodak on several committees defining broadcast standards for digital TV and digital cinema, and I still monitor those activities.  I've also been doing some personal travel - my wife and I have spent the last two winters in Florida Keys, and this past spring we travelled to Iceland and took a cruise on the Baltic Sea. 
 

When you have a strategy that's been successful, you don't change it without a good reason. 

Getting good yardage in football with your rushing game?  Keep giving the ball to the running back.  Want to put out a late-inning rally in baseball?  Send in Mariano Rivera.  Want your next Pixar film to be a success?  Don't forget to include John Ratzenberger. 

Leveraging new technology into a family of image sensors?  Just keep extending the family portfolio. 

This week, Kodak announced the new KODAK KAI-08050 Image Sensor  - the latest addition to our family of products based on the KODAK TRUESENSE 5.5 micron Interline Transfer CCD Platform.  Like the other members of this family, the KAI-08050 shares features common to this portfolio of products - the same reduction in pixel size, the improvements to image quality, and increase in frame rate.  But now, these advances are available in an 8-megapixel sensor - running at up to 16 frames per second - providing a new level of detail to applied imaging markets. 

As the biggest member of this family, the KAI-08050 even has a few tricks up its sleeve.  A Region of Interest (ROI) mode in the sensor allows the center portion to be read out at even higher frame rate, letting customers trade resolution for speed.  Want to use the KAI-08050 as a 6 Meg, 16:9 sensor?  You got it - at 20 frames per second.  How about focusing on a VGA window at the center of the sensor (so you can do a high-speed focus of your image)?  Over 60 fps.

In short, this baby rocks.

With the KAI-08050, Kodak's new family of interline CCD sensors is really taking shape, with this new 8-megapixel sensor joining the 1-megapixel KAI-01050, the 2-megapixel KAI-02050, and the 1080p (16:9 HDTV format) KAI-02150.  And since all of these sensors share the same electrical design and respond the same way to light, manufacturers can easily leverage a single camera design to support the full family of sensors, making it easy for them to provide a full portfolio of products to their customers. 

More choices, more options, better performance.  All by leveraging a common technology into a family of world-class image sensors. 

That's a strategy that never needs fixing.