Lockheed Martin Donates Clean Room to Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project 

 

Lockheed Martin has donated a class 10,000 clean room to the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP). This clean room will help protect refurbished 1960s-era Ampex FR-900 tape drives from the environment inside NASA Ames Research Park Building 596 aka “McMoons,” which was originally constructed to house a McDonalds restaurant.

In the 1960s, these tape drives were operated in an old-style computer room, with raised floors, ultra-clean air, and constant air conditioning. Since the building’s air conditioning system was sized for the heat of the kitchen and lots of customers, the temperature could be maintained to near optimum conditions. However, dust and dirt are still a problem for the finely tuned machine. One large dust particle could break a head tip if it went into it in the wrong direction.

As such, the 10 x 12 foot clean room will provide a more optimal environment for both of the tape drives. The clean room has a positive air pressure and heavy filtering of the air to reduce dust particles in the air. The positive air pressure also helps to keep outside floor dirt from being sucked up in the fans that cool the machines.

Lockheed Martin team members who helped in the assembly of the portable clean room were Bob Allen, Lance Ellingson, Robert Phillips and David Leskovsky.

“This generous gift from Lockheed Martin will help us to keep the tape drives operating better in an environment similar to what they were designed for” said Dennis Wingo, LOIRP project lead.

The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) is located at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA. Funding and support for this project has been provided by NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, NASA Innovative Partnerships Program, NASA Lunar Science Institute, NASA Ames Research Center, Odyssey Moon, SkyCorp, and SpaceRef Interactive.

For more information

• Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP)  http://www.moonviews.com

• NASA’s Lunar Science Institute http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov

• NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate http://www.nasa.gov/exploration