July 20, 2018
Website Notice

Note: This website (moonviews.com) has not been regularly updated since 2014. Now that the project’s data has been submitted to NASA, this website will no longer be updated but will be maintained as an online archive of the LOIRP’s prior activities. Thank you for your interest in – and support of – our project. //

The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) is a project to digitize the original analog data tapes from the five Lunar Orbiter spacecraft that were sent to the Moon in 1966 and 1967; it is funded by NASA, SkyCorp, SpaceRef Interactive, and private individuals.[1]

The first image to be successfully recovered by the project was released in November 2008. It was the first photograph of the Earth from the Moon, taken in August 1966. On February 20, 2014, the project announced it had completed the primary tape capture portion of the project.[2] One medium resolution image, most of one high resolution image and parts of three others are missing, apparently due to lapses at the time they were being recorded.[3] The rest of the Lunar Orbiter images have been successfully recovered[2] and have been published in NASA's Planetary Data System.