Lunokhod Archive?

[ravens_cry]

Does anyone know of a location on the web, similar to Apollo archive, of images from the Lunakhod rovers? http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogMoon.htm has quite a few, but I am given to understand the craft took much more images then shown here. Is there a more complete collection on the internet anywhere that anyone knows of?
Thank you in advance for any help. :)

[JonClarke]

Sadly that is all I know of.

It would be a wonderful archieve of images, from two traverses of 11 and 37 km traverses.

After more than 30 years they are still the most capable unmanned rovers sent off planet.

Jon

[KaiYeves]

I would like to see that. The Russian missions fascinate me, especially because adults don't talk about them a lot.

[JonClarke]

There are a few more images here:

http://selena.sai.msu.ru/Home/Spacecrafts/Lunokhod1/lunokhod1e.htm

http://selena.sai.msu.ru/Home/Spacecrafts/Lunokhod2/lunokhod2e.htm

At the time these missions (and the sample return probes) were overshadowed by Apollo and largely dismissed. It is only recently as people have started flying rovers and planning sample return missions again, that the achievement these represent is beginning to be realised.

Jon

[ravens_cry]

Thanks JonClarke, though few in number, those are some really great pictures.
Thanks a bunch! :D
Anyone who knows any other sources, please step forward.

[JonClarke]

Glad to be of service! :)

[JonClarke]

These short papers may be of interest too.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/1194.pdf

http://www.planetology.ru/txt/abdrakhimov&shashkina_20080925_31217.pdf

It would be fantastic if the TV images that the drivers used to operate them still existed on video and were available.

Jon

[ravens_cry]

These short papers may be of interest too.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/1194.pdf

http://www.planetology.ru/txt/abdrakhimov&shashkina_20080925_31217.pdf

It would be fantastic if the TV images that the drivers used to operate them still existed on video and were available.

Jon
Wow, and it looks a lot like Apollo shots, who knew?
I found this documentary on youtube about the men who built the lunokhod entitled Tank on the Moon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K0_p2R13_8&feature=related)

[JonClarke]

Thanks for the You Tube link - fascinating. I remember hereing about it at the time. But very little attention was paid to it in the western media. "The Soviets landed a robotic rover on the moon called lunokhod today" and "the mission of lunokhod as declared over today after it had travelled 11 kilometers" sort of thing. there were scientific papers of course, but compared to astronauts, who cared?

Jon

[ngc3314]

Thanks for the You Tube link - fascinating. I remember hereing about it at the time. But very little attention was paid to it in the western media.
Jon

To be fair, TASS typically didn't help with any substantive releases of material. "The Luna 324 automatic interplanetary station continued its planned program of maneuvers." Material available at all in open sources in the West amounted to only a handful of Lunokhod images before the archives opened and it became easy to talk to the people involved.

One fascinating aspect of these rovers which I learned from Asif Siddiqi's Challenge to Apollo is that they had a heritage dating to very early plans for cosmonauts on the Moon. One mission design called for landing a supply cache and perhaps even emergency return vehicle before the crew. Cosmonaut lands, rover is waiting for him to hop on, fasten seat belt and head to the other vehicle. (This was one of many concepts, of course- "powerpoint engineering" used to be called "viewgraph engineering").

[JonClarke]

To be fair, TASS typically didn't help with any substantive releases of material. "The Luna 324 automatic interplanetary station continued its planned program of maneuvers." Material available at all in open sources in the West amounted to only a handful of Lunokhod images before the archives opened and it became easy to talk to the people involved.

That's certainly true.


One fascinating aspect of these rovers which I learned from Asif Siddiqi's Challenge to Apollo is that they had a heritage dating to very early plans for cosmonauts on the Moon. One mission design called for landing a supply cache and perhaps even emergency return vehicle before the crew. Cosmonaut lands, rover is waiting for him to hop on, fasten seat belt and head to the other vehicle. (This was one of many concepts, of course- "powerpoint engineering" used to be called "viewgraph engineering"). .

I had heard of this too.

Jon

[ngc3314]

And to bring in more astronomy ties - each rover carried an upward-looking wide-angle photometer to measure the UV and visible-light sky brightness, to continue work started as far back as Cosmos 51 in 1964 using wide-angle measures to refine stellar statistics and Milky Way models, measure the zodiacal light, and look for scattering in the ridiculously thin lunar atmosphere (quite likely augmented by dust levitation at some times of lunar day).

[ravens_cry]

I have sent an email the authors of the second PDF about obtaining digitized versions of the Lunokhod imagery, and am awaiting a response. Here's hoping.

[JonClarke]

Good luck!

[ravens_cry]

Thanks. Well, I heard back from them, and while they are not sharing at this time, they will notify me when they add them, which apparently they are planning to do.

[PraedSt]

Thanks. Well, I heard back from them, and while they are not sharing at this time, they will notify me when they add them, which apparently they are planning to do.
Shame. Why aren't they sharing? Haven't gotten round to digitising them? Or they just being mean?

[JonClarke]

Shame. Why aren't they sharing? Haven't gotten round to digitising them? Or they just being mean?

Resources probably. It would be a big archive. After more than 30 years the original quality may not be very good, and restoration may be needed.

They probably have higher budget priorities.

Jon

[djellison]

It would be criminal to let the old digital media get beyond the point of salvation before embarking on a Lunar-Orbiter like recovery program - there's days of live driving footage as well, all would be stunning via modern processing techniques.

[JonClarke]

It would be criminal to let the old digital media get beyond the point of salvation before embarking on a Lunar-Orbiter like recovery program - there's days of live driving footage as well, all would be stunning via modern processing techniques.

Have you heard of any plans to do so?

[djellison]

Sadly not - and even if I were a millionaire philanthropist, I wouldn't know where to go to start.

[JonClarke]

Sadly not - and even if I were a millionaire philanthropist, I wouldn't know where to go to start.

In the remote chance of you getting a spare million, I would suggest the Dept of Lunar and Planetary Science, Moscow University who did a lot of the analysis (http://selena.sai.msu.ru/Home/moone.htm) or the Lavochkin Association who built it (http://enc.ex.ru/cgi-bin/n1firm.pl?lang=2&f=757)

Jon