very cool!
Are you aware of this group that recovered data from the first lunar orbiters that photographed the moon's surface back in the mid 60's? Interesting technical archeology. 70mm magnetic tapes that a JPL archivist kept in her garage for decades, and the recorder that was almost thrown into the great lakes at one point to dispose, had to be restored. Fascinating story and project that's now over. The restored first image of the earth from the moon is stunning. ...
Oh man, have I got a story about this.
Some years back, a co-worker & I had to go to NASA Ames for a meeting and to check out some vacant technical space there for potential use for hosting servers. It was my first time visiting Ames. Anyway, we arrived, parked and started heading for the building where the meeting was to be. But, we both immediately noticed a small building (adjacent to the Ames parking lot) that looked like an old Burger King. We looked at each other, talked about it, and then headed to the building expecting to snag some fries & soda. The doors were wide open, so we just walked in. We were completely taken by surprise as the place was chock full of some old mini-computer gear and lots of ancient storage devices. Since the two of us were older uber geeks, we were enthralled by all the familiar old 'tech. So, we continued to nose around. Eventually, a guy appeared from the depths & greeted us. I had tons of questions and he was gracious enough to spend time answering most of them. The gist of the conversation was that they were doing "data recovery". However, at the time, he didn't level with us on exactly what was being recovered. He was somewhat impressed we recognized the old storage devices & knew something about them. He wasn't aware of the fact that my co-worker & I might have been able to help them out (heck, I would have gladly donated my time if I'd know what the mission was). Back in the day, one of my jobs was reverse engineering legacy device code/drivers (ie: no longer supported or just abandoned) to add new features or fix compatibility issues.
Anyway, we didn't realize what was really going on in the old Burger King building until NASA PR finally spilled the beans & write-ups appeared in the press. Such a cool surprise!