NASA boffins have released 42-year-old image of Earth taken from the moon which have been enhanced using the latest technology.

The scientists say that such images, which have been gathering dust in a NASA store room will enable them to compare historical images of the moon with new images that will be captured when NASA sends new missions to the moon in the coming years.

The pictures, which will be placed in the public domain, were taken in the 1960s by cameras onboard five separate Lunar Orbiter spacecraft. After they were transmitted to earth they were stored on magnetic tapes and then transferred to film for analysis.

However at that time full resolution of those images was not available because the technology didn't exist to extract it.

The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project  which is based at NASA Ames Research Centre has taken the original data from the 1,500 tapes and translated them into digital form from which the highest resolution can finally be analysed. It will mean that when the latest batch of satellites bring back data from the moon it will be possible to tell how the lunar surface has changed, which in the great scheme of things, will be very little indeed.

The picture NASA has released was the first ever taken in which Earth is seen from another celestial body. In it, it is possible to see the north coast of Africa, as well as the glint of the sun on the Atlantic Ocean. X

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