It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, November 07, 2021
NWT Union and marine services company reach tentative deal
A union representing marine services workers in the Northwest Territories says it has reached a tentative agreement with employer ORSI, preventing strike action hinted at earlier this week.
Details of the agreement were first reported by the CBC.The agreement was reached following conciliation on Wednesday between the union – the Public Service Alliance of Canada, or PSAC, with its affiliate the Union of Canadian Transportation Employees – and ORSI, or Offshore Recruiting Services Inc.
Lorraine Rousseau, regional executive vice-president for PSAC, told Cabin Radio she was “very happy” the tentative agreement had been reached but could not yet disclose many details.
“A long-term collective agreement has been secured until the year 2024 with annual increases that we think will protect our members from the high cost of living in the North,” she said. The deal must now be ratified by the union’s members.
Prior to Wednesday’s meeting, the union said negotiations had “reached an impasse” with ORSI over the wages being offered to employees.
While previous agreements saw annual increases of two percent, Rousseau said ORSI had offered incremental increases of one percent, 1.25 percent, and 1.5 percent each year, based on consumer price indexes in southern city centres that she said were not reflective of the North.
ORSI is based in Newfoundland and Labrador but provides marine services to the Mackenzie River supply chain under a contract with the NWT government. Many of the employees delivering those services live in the North.
The NWT government took over barging services in the territory in 2016 when it purchased the assets of Northern Transportation Company Ltd – known as NTCL – for $7.5 million. At the time, the GNWT said it planned to partner with private businesses to contract out marine services.
Rousseau said while strike action was averted in this case, the union will consider ORSI’s “inaction of coming to the table with bargaining in good faith” when it negotiates the next contract in 2024.
“It was so close to some type of job action that, next time around, we really have to remember that and be cognizant of what we’re getting into, because we were not unreasonable,” she said.
Yellowknife nurses, at breaking point, complain to ministers
Yellowknife's Stanton Territorial Hospital. Ollie Williams/Cabin Radio
Nurses in Yellowknife have told NWT politicians they feel unsupported by senior management, morale is low, and they need “fair compensation” for their hazardous pandemic work environment.
Staff at Stanton Territorial Hospital have long complained of what they perceive to be poor management. Many have left their posts, a fact acknowledged by the NWT government when it backed a survey being launched to understand why people leave.
But the fall Covid-19 outbreak, in which dozens of people have been hospitalized, is understood to have pushed some nurses to the edge as operating hours lengthened and conditions worsened.
In a letter to ministers and MLAs, healthcare workers say southern provinces have provided extra compensation during the pandemic but the NWT’s health authority has not.
“During a time where most government employees were sent home to work, healthcare professionals did not have that option. When the pandemic began in March 2020, many healthcare professionals were recalled from their vacations. This lost vacation time was not returned to their leave banks,” the letter states.
“Existing vacations were cancelled and all new leave requests were denied due to ‘operational requirements.’ This caused great stress and exhaustion in healthcare professionals. The workplace was filled with frequent policy changes, shift changes, and redeployment. Staff members were left uncertain and worried about their ability to provide safe patient care.
“Staff members have also reported being required to use time from their personal sick leave bank when isolating due to becoming symptomatic after Covid-19 exposure at work. We propose that this should be considered ‘injury on duty’ and be paid as such.”
The five-page letter asks for the NWT government to:
return lost vacation time;
return personal sick time used for Covid-19;
provide wage premiums when working in high-risk areas (e.g. intubating Covid-19 patients);
institute a $4/hour wage increase retroactive to March 2020;
provide retention bonuses to current staff;
provide signing bonuses to recruit new staff; and
clarify where federal Covid-19 funding has been allocated.
Staff signing the letter say they don’t know where federal funding designed to alleviate the pandemic’s effects on the healthcare system has gone.
“We have not received new equipment or compensation for the risk to our personal health,” they write.
The letter states Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and Saskatchewan have all agreed to lump-sum payments or hourly wage increases to act as hazard pay for front-line healthcare workers.
At least a dozen nurses said on Friday they were sending the letter to all 19 MLAs. Others were expected to follow suit.
The NWT’s health authority said in a statement it had no immediate comment.
“However, we take the concerns of our staff seriously and will review the issues raised in the letter,” spokesperson Jack Miltenberger wrote.
The nurses tell MLAs: “Staff morale is low and management has not adequately implemented solutions. Please advocate for the healthcare workers to receive fair compensation for the many hazardous working conditions we have been faced with during this pandemic.”
‘Every time I come in, I cry’
Nurses have described a stressful and unsustainable environment at Stanton Territorial Hospital for most of the year, even before the fall outbreak arrived.
In July, one nurse talked of being allowed two days’ vacation in early summer and then being told they could receive no further time off until at least October.
That nurse said staff were resigning their permanent positions and becoming relief nurses – meaning they can be hired back as needed but retain control of their schedule – in order to escape an environment where many staff are virtually never given the leave dates they request. At the time, there were no active Covid-19 cases in the NWT.
Stanton Territorial Hospital, right, and the former hospital building are seen in May 2020. Ollie Williams/Cabin Radio
“People are taking stress leave,” the nurse said in July. “They are asking to take important time off – to take just one day off – and they’re not getting it. Then they’re going to a doctor and getting five weeks off, to say screw you.
“This is not good practice. People say they can’t even come near the building. They’ve worked more than 20 years, they’ve never taken a sick day, and they ask for one day off and they can’t get it. One nurse told me: ‘Every time I come in, I start to cry. So I’m just going home.'”
In recent months, the NWT’s registered nurses’ association has been planning a survey in part to understand why the territory struggles to retain nurses.
“Anecdotally, there’s this sense that people are planning to leave,” Denise Bowen, executive director of the Registered Nurses Association of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, said in August.
“There are nurses who are feeling particularly disappointed, particularly upset about policies that have been implemented regarding Covid,” Bowen said, referring in part to earlier news reports.
The association’s survey was planned for September and October. After this report was first published, the association said it had chosen to delay the survey until later in the year. Once it is complete, the NWT government will receive a report with its findings.
It’s the first time such a survey has been carried out since 2005.
Stress ‘rained down’
In the past two months, the NWT’s Covid-19 situation has worsened significantly.
From the start of September to the end of October, the territory reported more than 1,400 Covid-19 cases. In the same period, 49 people with Covid-19 required hospital treatment.
Only now is the situation subsiding. As of Friday there were 47 active Covid-19 cases in the NWT, down from a daily high of 456 over Thanksgiving.
On Friday, a group of nurses signing the letter to ministers spoke with Cabin Radio. All asked for their identity and even their units to be suppressed as they fear retribution from hospital senior management. When staff raised concerns with reporters in the past, internal investigations attempted to unearth who had spoken.
“Any time someone makes a complaint, there’s an active investigation to discipline them,” one nurse said.
A second nurse told Cabin Radio: “This whole pandemic, we’ve been told how valued we are and how important we are. To know other provinces and territories have been given extra money for the work they’re doing and risk they’re taking, as a way to be thanked, and knowing the government here hasn’t done that, feels like a bit of a slap in the face.
“We’ve been really privileged in the North, not being super-exposed to Covid in the first few waves. But when this wave hit us we realized how small a hospital we are, how much of an area we service, and how things can quickly go wrong for us here.
“There was no backup. That was the straw that broke our backs. It was tiring and frustrating before, but we didn’t have it at that level. When the last wave hit, it showed us what’s expected of us and what’s not being given back.”
Nurses say they are expected to risk contracting Covid-19 daily and, more than that, must risk bringing the virus home to their loved ones.
Some say more than 18 months into the pandemic, provision of personal protective equipment remains inadequate with fresh masks not always readily available.
“It’s been a huge stress on all of us,” said a third nurse. “Just the risk.”
The first nurse said: “I didn’t see my family for six months because I was terrified I was going to bring Covid home and give it to them.
“I didn’t really see any attempts to help us and say yes, you deserve PPE. You should have it.
“The stress, it just rained down on our heads every day. Every day, they changed their policies and procedures. I know this is happening all across Canada, this is not new to us or specific to us. But everywhere else, they got reimbursed as a thank-you. What the nurses here got was a sign on the fence across from the hospital.
“And the sign is great. But it doesn’t feel like we’ve been appreciated by the government or by the hospital management.”
Minister has ‘questions’ about workplace environment
An NWT public health nurse earns between $94,380 and $112,730 annually, according to information published by the territorial government. In August, the CBC reported resident family doctors in the NWT received a base salary of $213,748 to $340,368 annually, “plus up to another $100,000 in recruitment and retention bonuses, plus other benefits.” Some specialists can earn between $7,045 and $9,790 per week to backfill in the territory.
In August, NWT health minister Julie Green told Cabin Radio the pay offered to northern healthcare workers was in line with that paid elsewhere in the country.
“Those are standard compensation rates,” said Green at the time. “So you could come to the NWT and earn that money, or you could get a job in another location and earn that money.
“We need to make ourselves different. What do we have to offer that no other jurisdiction has to offer, in order to attract both nurses and doctors? They’re in very high demand and there’s stiff competition. So you know, in addition to paying the standard rates for service, I think we need to promote that the NWT is a great place to live and practise your medical profession.”
Asked if the NWT was creating the good working environment she described, the minister acknowledged she was aware of concern among staff.
“We have questions about that,” Green said in August, pointing to the nurses’ association survey and other work being done to understand why people leave healthcare roles in the NWT.
“I do recognize that we ask a tremendous amount from our healthcare professionals,” the minister told Cabin Radio.
“Many of them have been with us since the move to the new hospital, which was very labour-intensive. And the startup was rough. I know people worked a lot of extra hours and didn’t get enough vacation time.
“And we rolled right from that into Covid and the same situation again. This business of being short-staffed means that it’s harder and harder to grant people their vacation requests and time-off requests. And it just ends up leading to more and more exhaustion and turnover.
“We seem to be caught in a vicious cycle where, if we could increase our workforce, we would have greater job satisfaction in terms of vacation time and time off to offer our existing staff. So my message to them is we’re making every effort to bring more nurses on, so that people who have worked straight through can take the time off that they need, that we want them to have.
“There’s no point in exhausting people to the point where they feel their only option is to quit in order to get relief.”
Bosses say they are listening
Kim Riles – the NWT health authority’s new chief executive and a former chief operating officer at Stanton – said a national nursing shortage had led to higher-than-normal vacancy rates at the hospital this year.
In August, Riles told Cabin Radio she had held meetings to understand the sources of staff frustration. “Access to leave is a key concern,” she acknowledged.
“In terms of how I sympathize with nurses who want access to leave, I have a huge amount of sympathy for that,” said Riles at the time, before the fall Covid-19 outbreak.
“There have been a number of factors that have impacted people’s ability to have time off, people’s ability to connect with their families, to just rest and recharge. So I think it’s immensely important for us to hear that and to be able to decide how that impacts our ability to be flexible as we move forward.
“We have to balance our obligations to the public – for continuity of services, access to care and programs that we provide – with needing to hear from our staff that they’re tired, that they need their time off. Hearing this feedback is important and I just want to assure people that we are listening.”
Two months later, the nurses’ letter to MLAs concludes: “We have brought our concerns up with multiple levels of management within the NTHSSA [the NWT’s health authority]. Our requests for the return of vacation and sick leave along with the introduction of hazard pay for Covid-19 have not been addressed. We have not been given clear reasons for the lack of these benefits.
“Healthcare workers have worked tirelessly throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and have not been adequately compensated for their sacrifices. Many staff members have put their personal health at risk and are burnt out.
“Healthcare workers are leaving their professions at an alarming rate, and every area in the NTHSSA has multiple vacancies. The NTHSSA is not supporting us.”
Correction: November 6, 2021 – 12:23 MT. This report initially stated a survey of NWT healthcare workers had been taking place in September and October. After publication, the nurses’ association responsible for the survey said it had in fact chosen to delay the survey, which is now set to begin this month.
Cargill workers vote in favour of strike action as bargaining negotiations stall
The High River Cargill plant was home to Canada's largest COVID-19 outbreak in the spring of 2020 when close to 950 workers tested positive
Author of the article: Dylan Short Publishing date: Nov 05, 2021 •
The Cargill meat packing plant near High River, where more than 900 workers tested positive for COVID-19 in April and May 2020.
PHOTO BY JIM WELLS/POSTMEDIA
A majority of employees of the Cargill meat processing plant in High River have voted in favour of taking strike action as the union accuses the company of doing little to advance negotiations.
United Food & Commercial Workers Union, Local 401, issued a statement online Friday saying close to 1,400 members who work at the plant voted 97 per cent in favour of going on strike if Cargill does not provide a fair offer.
Union spokesman Scott Payne said members have grown increasingly angry over the negotiations that began in March after the previous collective agreement expired at the end of 2020. He said the employer has not come to the table in order for any offers to be presented.
Payne said the union is looking to address issues around health and safety, movement within the company and wage concerns.
“Cargill has dragged its feet in two ways,” said Payne. “One way is its willingness to actually make proposals and respond to our proposals, and dragging their feet in that regard.
“But they’ve also dragged their feet in terms of their availability. They’ve given us a couple days here, a couple days there. They just haven’t given us enough of their time and attention to actually making any progress on negotiations.”
The two sides met with a government-appointed mediator on one occasion before UFCW’s bargaining committee made the decision to ask the mediator to leave the talks to move forward with a strike vote, according to the union’s statement online.
Payne said he believes a strike is the most likely outcome of negotiations. He said the bargaining team is set to meet with Cargill representatives next week and that strike action could take place following those meetings.
“We’re looking at 1,000 people ready to stand out in front of that plant on strike, and it’s looking very likely that’s what it’s going to come to,” said Payne.
Requests for comment were not returned by Cargill Friday afternoon.
Three deaths were linked to the site’s outbreak. Workers Benito Quesada, 51, and Hiep Bui, 67, both died from the virus last spring. Armando Sallegue, 71, the father of another plant worker, also died from the disease while visiting from the Philippines.
A second outbreak was declared at the plant in March 2021 as 11 cases were connected to the worksite.
About 2,000 employees work at the High River Cargill plant.
Deere says rejected deal Is ‘best-and-final’ offer to union
Joe Deaux, Bloomberg News
Deere & Co. workers hold signs during a strike outside the John Deere Des Moines Works facility in Ankeny, Iowa, U.S., on Friday, Oct. 15, 2021. Thousands of workers at Deere & Co., the world’s biggest farm machinery maker, began picketing Thursday for the first time in more than three decades to demand better pay as the company heads for its most profitable year ever. , Bloomberg
Deere & Co. said the new contract it provided to striking union employees is the company’s best and final offer, and they aren’t returning to the bargaining table.
The world’s largest maker of farm equipment said it remains in contact with the United Auto Workers union that represents workers, but that it has nothing else to bargain about. The comments come a day after workers voted down a second tentative agreement, extending the strike by some 10,000 workers into a third week.
“The agreement that we provided is frankly our best and final offer,” Marc Howze, chief administrative officer for Deere, said in an interview. “In order for us to be competitive we have gone as far as we’re gonna go.”
The latest rejected deal offered larger wage increases, no new tiers to retirement benefits and a signing bonus of US$8,500. The wage increase affecting 14 of Deere’s facilities was larger than nearly a dozen other collective bargaining agreements the UAW has negotiated since 2018, according to Bloomberg Law’s database of labor contracts.
The Moline, Illinois-based company said Tuesday it would move into a new phase of its customer service continuation plan. Howze, though, would not give details, other than to say that the company is focused on meeting customer demand, especially for its parts business. The parts business is crucial at this time of year, because farmers are harvesting and need their equipment running at full capacity.
Currently, Deere is keeping its operations running by staffing facilities with salaried employees. Howze wouldn’t say how many striking workers the company was able to replace.
“We’re not going back to the bargaining table,” Howze said. “There’s nothing else to bargain about.”
Inuk multidisciplinary artist Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory wins Sobey Art Award
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Iqaluit-based artist is known for performing uaajeerneq, a
Greenlandic mask dance
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Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory is seen in an undated handout photo. Williamson Bathory has been awarded the Sobey Art Award and its $100,000 prize. (Jamie Griffiths/Chickweed Arts/The Canadian Press)
Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory has won this year's Sobey Art Award for emerging artists.
The Iqaluit-based Inuk multidisciplinary artist received the $100,000 prize at a ceremony at the National Gallery of Canada on Saturday.
She is known for performing uaajeerneq, a Greenlandic mask dance that involves storytelling centred around three elements: fear, humour and sexuality.
In a news release announcing the award, Williamson Bathory said she uses her art to tell her own story and that of her family, which she says is one of "joy and celebration, awe and difficulty, beauty and destruction all at once."
"In a time when we recognize that this Canadian soil bears the small bodies of many thousands of Indigenous children, in an era when we work through colonial institutions to keep our families safe in the pandemic and at a moment when the Arctic city I live [in] does not have potable water coming from the taps, I am proud to be recognized as I tell you the story of a momentous experience my family had on the land," she said.
'Defies preconceived notions'
The Sobey Art Award celebrates emerging talent in the contemporary visual arts and is jointly administered by the Sobey Art Foundation and the National Gallery of Canada.
The jury consisted of Canadian curators and two international jurors. In the release, they said Williamson Bathory "provocatively transforms the framework of references for contemporary art."
"Williamson Bathory's performance practice courageously defies preconceived notions through embodied lived experience," the jury said. "Her works invite us to share in a world abundant with possibility infused with the interconnections of land, family, community and cultural knowledge."
Williamson Bathory was chosen from a shortlist of five artists, each one representing a geographic region of Canada.
Stargazers across Southwestern Ontario will have a ringside seat to a lunar eclipse this month.
A Full Beaver Moon will rise on Friday, November 19, and be accompanied by a near-total lunar eclipse.
Backyard Astronomer Gary Boyle says even though it is not officially a total eclipse, the lunar surface will still show darkness and some colour, typically seen in a total event.
“This one will be extra special and appear very close to a total eclipse,” said Boyle. “It’s a wonderful phenomenon to see.”
It will reach its peak illumination at 4:02 a.m. (EST) Friday morning, so be sure to look up after sunset on November 18 to catch a glimpse when it’s nearly full.
“The moon will be in the larger shadow of the earth except for a mere three per cent, leaving only the edge in sunlight,” said Boyle.
According to Boyle, it will be best viewed in western Canada however, people in Southwestern Ontario will still get a chance to enjoy it. He said the best way to enjoy the eclipse is to get out of city. However, it can been seen by looking out of the window.
“We see about two or three eclipses throughout the year. Some are total and some are partial,” said Boyle. “It’s not rare but it is a beatiful thing to see nature in motion.”
LOOKING SHARP LOOK: 55 YEARS AGO, NASA TOOK ‘THE PICTURE OF THE CENTURY’ Lunar Orbiter 2 showed us the Moon in a whole new light.
MORE THAN A HALF-CENTURY AGO, NASA led a revolution in lunar science. In the 1960s, the space agency launched five orbital expeditions to map the surface of the Moon and scout out potential landing sites for a crewed mission. Dubbed the Lunar Orbiters 1 through 5, these missions were the key to the United States beating the Soviet Union to land a human on the Moon. Along the way, the Lunar Orbiters changed how we look at our nearest cosmic neighbor — and especially Lunar Orbiter 2.
Technically, all five of the Lunar Orbiter missions did their job — they mapped the Moon and made human trips possible. But Lunar Orbiter 1 had a rocky start.
“[NASA] figured that they needed three successful missions to actually fulfill the primary mission, which was studying various candidate landing sites for the Apollo missions,” Matt Shindell, curator at the National Air and Space Museum, tells Inverse.
Lunar Orbiter 1, launched in August 1966, was a mixed bag. It successfully entered orbit around the Moon, the first American spacecraft to do so (the Soviets got there first in April that year with Luna 10), and took the first image of the Earth from the perspective of the Moon.
But Lunar Orbiter 1’s high-resolution camera failed, so the images are pretty low-res. These blurry images lacked the kind of detail necessary to scout Apollo Landing sites — NASA had to try again with Lunar Orbiter 2.
The first image of Earth, taken from orbit around the Moon by Lunar Orbiter 1. NASA
“Lunar Orbiter 2, on the other hand, was a perfect success,” Shindell says. Launched from Cape Canaveral on November 6, 1966, Lunar Orbiter 2 flew to the Moon and stayed active until October 1967, snapping photos that “made headlines for just how impressive and clear they were,” Shindell adds.
For that, Lunar Orbiter 2 claims the accolade of being the first entirely successful Lunar Orbiter mission, paving the way for Neil Armstrong’s boot print on the Moon.
NAILING THE PICTURE — The Lunar Orbiter spacecraft were technically identical to one another, and all shared a unique imaging system different from any of NASA’s other planetary science spacecraft.
For example, NASA’s Ranger missions to the Moon — also in the 1960s — used television cameras, while later spacecraft would use digital imaging systems. In comparison, the Lunar Orbiters used an intricate mechanical system to shoot on 70mm Kodak aerial film, develop the film themselves, and then scan and transmit the resulting images back to Earth. Each probe was also equipped with an 80mm wide-angle lens and 610mm high-resolution lens, the latter designed to take detailed photos of the lunar surface.
On Lunar Orbiter 1, the high-resolution camera malfunctioned, and the images turned out to be a fuzzy mess. But the craft did manage to snap a breathtaking wide-angle shot of the Earth and Moon. It was a captivating and thought-provoking image, but only half of the probe’s intended mission.
Both of Lunar Orbiter 2’s lenses functioned beautifully, snapping stunning, never-before-seen details of the lunar surface, including an image of the Copernicus Crater.
The image of Copernicus Crater on the Moon hailed as “The Picture of the Century” by LIFE Magazine. NASA
“It was called ‘The Picture of the Century,’ by Life Magazine,” Shindell says. This image and others from the mission have since been eclipsed by the many subsequent majestic, full-color photos we hungrily devour every time NASA releases them for general consumption.
Yet, Shindell says, “for its time, these Lunar Orbiter 2 images were incredibly impressive and people took note of them.”
PICTURES WITH PURPOSE — The crisp and clear pictures didn’t just make headlines. NASA used these images to understand what they might be dealing with if and when they put boots on the regolith, as it were.
Essentially, the Lunar Orbiters were just one part of a massive reconnaissance project that included four successful Ranger missions, hard landers that crashed into the Moon and took pictures all the way down, and five successful soft-landing Surveyor landers.
At the time, a team led by Egyptian-American geologist Farouk El-Baz studied the images from the Lunar Orbiter missions, applying the same principles used to study aerial photography to understand geology on Earth. From the photographs, they gleaned vital clues about the realities of the lunar surface, “based on the angle at which the shadows were falling, and other types of physical evidence in the image that revealed different geologic information,” Shindell says.
An image of the Moon’s Guericke Crater, taken by Ranger 7.NASA
There was a critical difference in El-Baz’s work on Earth: On our planet, geologists can visit the place by air to “ground truth” their image analysis. El-Baz and his team had to rely on second-hand information coming from the Ranger and Surveyor landings for the Moon.
Shindell says they still learned a great deal, but he points out that NASA ultimately decided to play it safe in case the assumptions about the lunar surface turned out to be wrong when it came to the Apollo crewed missions.
“If you look at the lunar module when sitting on the surface of the Moon, on the Apollo 11 landing, the ladder is actually pretty high up,” Shindell says.
Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had to hop down from the lander to the Moon’s surface, and “that was partly because they have built-in this extra kind of margin for, ‘what if the lunar module sinks a little bit into the regolith?’”
Buzz Aldrin dangling above the lunar surface.NASA
The caution would prove unnecessary since the lunar surface — as El-Baz, the geologists, and the Lunar Orbiters, Rangers and Surveyors predicted — was relatively stable and capable of supporting humans and machines.
A FORGOTTEN LEGACY — Lunar Orbiter 2 sent more than 200 images of the Moon and space to Earth. The pictures show almost 1.6 million square miles of the lunar surface, including the site of Ranger 8’s crash-landing, which occurred in 1965. This location, not coincidentally, is just 15 miles away from where Apollo 11 eventually landed in the Sea of Tranquility.
These images have slipped from public memory, obscured by time and other stunning images like those taken by Neil Armstrong’s Hasselblad camera on the lunar surface itself. Yet 55 years later, the Lunar Orbiter missions should be celebrated for capturing — for the first time — the entire near-side of the Moon and 95 percent of the far side in detailed aerial photographs. These photographs are still used — and improved — by researchers today as they study Earth’s natural satellite.
“There’s been an effort at NASA Ames to reprocess a lot of the images that came back from the Lunar Orbiter program,” Shindell says. To do this, scientists are using new digital processing techniques invented long after the Lunar Orbiter went up to space.
“We now know there was even greater detail in those images than we were able to at first see.” Truly a cosmic gift that keeps giving.