A trove of lost Lunokhod data may have been found.
Between 1970 and 1973, the Soviet space program achieved an amazing feat: landing and driving the first remote-controlled roving robots on the Moon. These two vehicles were called Lunokhod-1 and -2, and they gathered invaluable scientific data as well as images of the surface of the Moon during their unprecedented, and still unrivaled, total of 52 kilometers of remotely controlled lunar
How can you help?
The format of the video images and of the science data is currently unknown and it is unclear what the tapes actually contain. This provides three main avenues of investigation:
- gathering information on how these tapes were recorded and how the data was encoded;
- transcribing and translating what the voice says;
- physically extracting the data and images from the tapes and presenting them in usable form.
If you have experience in these fields and are willing to help, please contact me.
I am compiling a list of potentially useful technical references:
- Soviet report on Lunokhod-2 (1973, via Roscosmos)
- Lunokhod-1 Soviet Lunar Surface Vehicle (1971, RAND/ARPA); page 4 specifically discusses telemetry data types
- Lunokhod-1 data available at NASA
- Lunokhod-2 – A Retrospective Glance after 30 Years (Bogatchev and Koutcherenko)
- Lunokhod-1 and Lunokhod-2 at the Department of Lunar and Planetary Research, Moscow University
- Lunokhod images and technical description of image formatting and transmission modes
- Russian information on “remote control lunokhods and planetrovers”
- Soviet space cameras by Don P. Mitchell
Full disclosure: I am not financially involved in this matter in any way. I am publishing this article and doing research on the subject purely out of historical interest.
