Building a view of Earth from NASA's old data tapes

Science: On 23 September 1966, NASA's Nimbus II satellite soared over Earth in a polar orbit every 108 minutes, taking pictures of cloud cover and measuring heat radiated from the planet's surface. The data documented the extent of polar ice shelves and the paths of two typhoons, but like thousands of other Nimbus II records, the information was originally stored on analog tapes and later forgotten for decades.

Then last month, researchers working out of an abandoned McDonald's restaurant on the grounds of NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, recovered the Nimbus data from that day in 1966, creating a photo mosaic of the globe 43 years ago.

The resulting image (above) is the oldest and most detailed from NASA's Earth-observing satellites. It's also the latest success story in what researchers call techno-archaeology: pulling data from archaic storage systems. Once forgotten and largely unreadable with modern equipment, old data tapes are providing researchers with new information on changes in the surfaces of Earth and the moon.

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