Featured Photos from Pioneer 10/11 computer tapes

Perhaps not vintage, but interesting none the less. And vintage by computer standards regardless.

I have acquired several Pioneer tapes from eBay and have send them to an awesome person who does data recovery.

One of the tapes:


Here is one of the tapes in the tape drive:


Here is a sample of the metadata found on QK7992H:

Block 1582:.. 0001000100550818 1 2 2020 1530 1 C * * * * * 720* * * * * * * * * * 2
CLWR1530 VESTA,
12MIN,SM.AP.,
LO-DISP
ZELLNER/MAY 21,1978
3 CCAM 2 IMAGE 1530
PROC VERSN 211
PARAM SET NO 8 4 C
NO LAMP-EXP TIME=719 SECS

Block 1583:..C78141074329* * **8 * 21*074330 CAMINIT

Block 1584:.. 083656 SPREP 2
Block 1585:..092642 EXPOBCM 2 12 0 MAXG NOL
EXPOSURE END TIME
READ 2 LO SS 1 NORMALC..

Block 1586:..
MODE LWH
PSMGT* * *ZELLNER

Block 1602:..*GEOMF 16:35Z MAY 31,'78 HC
********* GEOM. & PHOTOM. CORRECTED IMAGE *********

CPCF C/** DATA REC. 12 1 1 1 768 9216 5 2 6.1 5.0 2536 .00000 1PC 0 2303 4069 8008 10073 11878 1PC 15883 20149 24471 29391 34333 42032 1PC..

Block 1603:.. 17.000 17.000 17.000 17.000 17.000 17.000 1PC 17.000 17.000 17.000 17.000 17.000 17.000 1
PCTUBE 2
SEC EHT 6.1
ITT EHT 5.0
WAVELENGTH 2536
DIFFUSER 0 1PC C
MODE : FACTOR .283E 00 1PC*
FICOR 16:35Z MAY 31,'78 HC..

Block 1604:..******** DATA FROM SMALL APERTURE ********
C******** DATA FROM SMALL APERTURE ********
C*EXTLOW 17:06Z MAY 31,'78
HC@EXTLOW :HT= 9, DC#= 1; ISN: 0 PSN 1 SIGS= .307 SIGL= .265CB 1= -.266830844221D 03.B 2= .225982053009D 00.B 3= .000000000000D 00C..

Block 1605:..A 1= -.298879489603D 03 A 2= .302397432558D 00 A 3= .000000000000D 00C ...C*SAR 17:06Z MAY 31,'78 HL



A program was written to convert the raw binary data (A b/w bitmap) to PNG.

Here the three B/W images recovered from tape QK7992H:



The tape also contains duo-colour photos, we tried several different types of colour merges.



Amazing that a bunch of nerds were able to do this with tapes from the early-mid 70's! (-:

We are still looking what the images are suppose to be...

There are also a bunch of tapes that are proven hardy to read, hopefully a follow-up for this later..

Regards,

 

The B&W one looks like it's moving!

 

Looks like sun spots images to me.

 

With the help of the unmannedspaceflight forum we've finally been able to trace down the images recovered from our Pioneer tapes.

Lets dive in:
The images recovered from our Pioneer tapes belong to spectrophotometry observations of Planets, Satellites and Asteroids.

The online files that match files on our tapes can be found here:

IUE Proposal Search

The B/W and colour images on QK7992H are LWR01530, LWR01531 and LWR01532.
We've got only a small part of Pione-7937 for now (Reading last year has been dicey) but its metadata says its LWR1888.

So what have we learnt from this?

1. Its still possible to correctly read and digitize binary data from magnetic tapes, at least into the 70's and 60's. As long as care and expertise is provided.

2. With the help of people around the world we were able to correctly process the image data into a common, modern format readily accessible with modern operating systems and software.

3. A crucial factor in the correct data processing has been the metadata found on the tape, which was easily readable and provided important clues to its contents.

4. Its unlikely the remaining tapes contain some of the lost Pioneer data sets, as they were all part of the same lot.

5. Crowdsourcing and openly providing the files has perhaps been the most important factor in the success of this project.

Hopefully I will be able to provide data from the remaining tapes at one point.
Regards,
Requiem