In the early '90's I was hanging out at the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies (CEPS) and supporting planetary researchers who were studying the inner planets. All these projects involved remote sensing technologies.

CEPS was started at the end of the the Apollo Manned Space Program by Dr. Farouk El-Baz and moved into the new National Air and Space Museum in 1976. CEPS is one of many Regional Planetary Image Facilities throughout the world established by NASA. The purpose of the image facility is to act as a reference library providing planetary science researchers, students and the general public with access to the extensive collection of image data obtained from planetary missions. The Planetary Image facility in NASM houses over 300,000 photographs and images of the planets and their satellites. CEPS is also involved in exhibitions and public outreach events like Mars Day.

1993 was not a good year for remote sensing. Contact was lost with Mars Observer on August 21, 2003,
three days before it was to enter orbit around the red planet. The loss of communications with the spacecraft was the result of a rupture of the fuel pressurization side of the spacecraft's propulsion system, resulting in a pressurized leak of both helium gas and liquid monomethyl hydrazine.

On October 5, 1993 Lansdat 6 failed after the rupture of a hydrazine manifold, the attitude controls were disabled and the satellite began to tumble at the start of the apogee-motor firing, and failed to reach orbit. Landsat 6 was intended to replace the existing Landsat satellites 4 and 5, which were launched in 1982 and 1984 while Mars Observer was going to be a source for new Mars data, adding to the aging Viking data from 1976.

URGGGGG..... No hope of new data any time soon

Shortly after Al Gore invented the Internet, I was looking for things to scan and put online.
Just outside my office was a wall full of 3 ring binders containing over 50,000 8x10 B/W and color
prints taken by the Apollo Astronauts on their trips to orbit the moon and their 6 visits to it's surface.
There were also Mission reports and other papers .

Since the US people paid for the Apollo program, all the NASA images were in the public domain.
I selected a few 100 of the thousands sitting outside my office and started to scan.

Many of my images can still be found online on the National Air and Space Museum website.

http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/apollo.htm

My old office mate had a collection of patches so I thru them on the scanner also.

http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/apollopatches.htm

The Astronauts all had a still camera strapped to their chest when they were on the surface.

Many places on the Moon were the Astronauts visited, they would stand in one spot and
click click click ...
as they rotated around, 30 or more images were captured.

I would then use Photoshop 2.5 on a MAC and stitched them together. A painful process since they weren't using a tripod nor any type of wide angle lens that I use today.

http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/AS17/images/LanderScene.jpg

http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/AS15/images/AS15_roverpan.m.jpg

http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/AS15/images/AS15-86-11600.jpg

http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/AS16/images/AS16_rover.jpg

http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/AS16/images/Apollo16_lander.jpg

Stitch enough of them together and you can make a 360.

http://pixeltricks.com/moon/

The images used in the Geocities website are examples are of my wife's hang gliding in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina during the summer of 2000.

http://pixeltricks.com/beach00/

Now I have better software, PhotoVista / Panoweaver and cool tripod mount for my own digital camera.

I have a nice fisheye lens and can capture the whole world in only 2 picture now.

Even an one image capture is cool.

Though I was too young to of taken part in the Apollo Program!!!

To see even better 360's of the lunar surface, check out the 38 QTVR's that are on the USGS Astrogeology website.

Access to the Apollo content as made me an Internet name and a running joke with my friends and relatives.