With 26 hours left, the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project is just below the $50,000 fundraising mark. Still shy of their $75,000 goal, they have made big developments since we last posted on the topic. Spread the news and lend a donation if you can spare it!
Donations will go towards refurbishing the tape drive heads, which continually get worn down from reading the image tapes. There are over 700 tapes left to process, and each tape takes one hour to play through. Once they are processed into digital data (over 20 terabytes processed so far) they are able to then create the images and do the archival paperwork.
Donations will also go towards paying the team members that do all of the aforementioned work of tape processing, digital processing, and paperwork. Over 600 images have been processed so far, but there are still 850 more to finish!
For more information, see the official page on Rockethub: http://www.rockethub.com/projects/14882-lunar-orbiter-image-recovery-project
and our own Penny4NASA write up on the project: http://www.penny4nasa.org/2013/03/13/lunar-orbiter-image-recovery-project/