text: Data recovery and digitization In 2000, the Astrogeology Research Program of the US Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona was funded by NASA (as part of the Lunar Orbiter Digitization Project ) to scan at 25 micrometer resolution archival LO positive film strips that were produced from the original data.  The goal was to produce a global mosaic of the Moon using the best available Lunar Orbiter frames (largely the same coverage as that of Bowker and Hughes, 1971).  The frames were constructed from scanned film strips; they were digitally constructed, geometrically controlled, and map-projected without the stripes that had been noticeable in the original photographic frames.  Because of its emphasis on construction of a global mosaic, this project only scanned about 15% of the available Lunar Orbiter photographic frames.  Data from Lunar Orbiter missions III, IV and V were included in the global mosaic.
  In addition, the USGS digitization project created frames from very high resolution Lunar Orbiter images for several 'sites of scientific interest.'  These sites had been identified in the 1960s when the Apollo landing sites were being selected.  Frames for sites such as the Apollo 12 landing site, the Marius Hills, and the Sulpicius Gallus rille have been released.
  In 2007, the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) began a process to convert the Lunar Orbiter Images directly from the original Ampex FR-900 analog video recordings of the spacecraft data to digital image format, a change which provided vastly improved resolution over the original images released in the 1960s.  The first of these restored images were released in late 2008. Almost all of the Lunar Orbiter images had been successfully recovered  and were undergoing digital processing before being submitted to NASA's Planetary Data System.