7 ms·

Apollo 13 enhanced images reveal life on stricken spacecraft

175 points by I-M-S 7y ago

Lukas_Skywalker 7y ago
When reading the title, I first thought NASA found microbes or other forms of life on pictures of the spacecraft. That would have been an insane level of enhancement. Still a very interesting read though.
- singlow 7y ago
  Yeah, I was imagining they had used image enhancement to see thermal signatures of the astronauts from exterior terrestrial photographs during the radio blackout.
nayuki 7y ago
Basically, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_compensation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_compensation plus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-resolution_imaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-resolution_imaging
- dr-detroit 7y ago
  What technique did they use to get that full on California Raisins effect during Mercury footage? Yikes!
AA-BA-94-2A-56 7y ago
Apollo 13 enhanced images reveal life... :D ...on stricken spacecraft... :|
tenant 7y ago
I remember watching the Apollo 13 movie for the first time in 1995 and thinking at the time how modern they were in those far off days of 1970. Now the same length of time has passed since 1995 (in the blink of an eye) and it still hasn't dated. The internet is huge but it feels like the only thing we've done since 1970.
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  I understand that space fanbois find manned space exploration romantic. But it's not all about entertaining you. Manned space flight has been a complete waste of resources and money, and likely will remain that way for the next 100 years. Since 1970 far more influential events: - 747 (early 1970) - Intel 4004 (1971) - GPS (1980s) - Internet (1990s) But aside from that, there have been incremental improvements of 1%/year in areas like fuel efficiency, medicine and metallurgy. That really adds up over 50 years. The Space Shuttle literally ate America's space exploration budget, and didn't even go past LEO. Everybody knew this, yet nobody did anything about it. The US needs to adopt space policies that actually advance science and technology, not manned spaceflight just for feel-good PR shots. A good start would be de-orbiting the ISS ASAP - the final manned space flight should be to send somebody to the ISS with a chain saw.
  - jve 7y ago
    Now think about when would we have GPS if there hasn't been rush to the space. It helps put todays (communication) satellites into space.
    - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
      There were satellites before there was man in space, and still today communication and GPS satellites are launched without the need for a human being to position them. In fact, many communication satellites are launched from completely different infrastructure than the US or Russia’s manned-spacecraft sites.
  - mb_72 7y ago
    > The US needs to adopt space policies that actually advance science and technology, not manned spaceflight just for feel-good PR shots. I would guess that your man-in-the-street can identify much more readily with another human doing 'something' in space than they can some 'robot', even if the latter might be more more productive. And what's wrong with some 'entertainment', not every aspect of life needs to be optimised and tuned for full productivity / efficiency.
conistonwater 7y ago
Not directly related to the article, but I would like to point out that Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13, is a fantastic public speaker, have a look at this talk he gave at MIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUUgTavzgSk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUUgTavzgSk.
sillyquiet 7y ago
Anybody else who got curious as I did at which pre-Sony Walkman portable tape recorder the Apollo program used, it's probably the Sony TC-50. My search brought me to this excellent techmoan video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJXRVyszFbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJXRVyszFbo

175 points by I-M-S 7y ago

When reading the title, I first thought NASA found microbes or other forms of life on pictures of the spacecraft. That would have been an insane level of enhancement. Still a very interesting read though.

singlow 7y ago
Yeah, I was imagining they had used image enhancement to see thermal signatures of the astronauts from exterior terrestrial photographs during the radio blackout.

nayuki 7y ago

Basically, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_compensation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_compensation plus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-resolution_imaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-resolution_imaging

dr-detroit 7y ago
What technique did they use to get that full on California Raisins effect during Mercury footage? Yikes!

AA-BA-94-2A-56 7y ago

Apollo 13 enhanced images reveal life... :D ...on stricken spacecraft... :|

tenant 7y ago

I remember watching the Apollo 13 movie for the first time in 1995 and thinking at the time how modern they were in those far off days of 1970. Now the same length of time has passed since 1995 (in the blink of an eye) and it still hasn't dated. The internet is huge but it feels like the only thing we've done since 1970.

redis_mlc 7y ago
I understand that space fanbois find manned space exploration romantic. But it's not all about entertaining you. Manned space flight has been a complete waste of resources and money, and likely will remain that way for the next 100 years. Since 1970 far more influential events: - 747 (early 1970) - Intel 4004 (1971) - GPS (1980s) - Internet (1990s) But aside from that, there have been incremental improvements of 1%/year in areas like fuel efficiency, medicine and metallurgy. That really adds up over 50 years. The Space Shuttle literally ate America's space exploration budget, and didn't even go past LEO. Everybody knew this, yet nobody did anything about it. The US needs to adopt space policies that actually advance science and technology, not manned spaceflight just for feel-good PR shots. A good start would be de-orbiting the ISS ASAP - the final manned space flight should be to send somebody to the ISS with a chain saw.
- jve 7y ago
  Now think about when would we have GPS if there hasn't been rush to the space. It helps put todays (communication) satellites into space.
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    There were satellites before there was man in space, and still today communication and GPS satellites are launched without the need for a human being to position them. In fact, many communication satellites are launched from completely different infrastructure than the US or Russia’s manned-spacecraft sites.
- mb_72 7y ago
  > The US needs to adopt space policies that actually advance science and technology, not manned spaceflight just for feel-good PR shots. I would guess that your man-in-the-street can identify much more readily with another human doing 'something' in space than they can some 'robot', even if the latter might be more more productive. And what's wrong with some 'entertainment', not every aspect of life needs to be optimised and tuned for full productivity / efficiency.

conistonwater 7y ago

Not directly related to the article, but I would like to point out that Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13, is a fantastic public speaker, have a look at this talk he gave at MIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUUgTavzgSk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUUgTavzgSk.

sillyquiet 7y ago

Anybody else who got curious as I did at which pre-Sony Walkman portable tape recorder the Apollo program used, it's probably the Sony TC-50. My search brought me to this excellent techmoan video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJXRVyszFbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJXRVyszFbo