With last week's launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA is taking the first steps to send a new generation of astronauts to the moon. This mission is designed to map out the terrain of the moon, identify resources on or near the surface, and better understand the radiation environment - all with the goal of aiding in the design of a future lunar outpost.

Just before the launch, I wrote about how Kodak CCD Image Sensors will play a key role in this mission. But you may not know that this isn't the first time Kodak technology has been involved in a space mission to map the moon.

1960's Lunar Orbiter

In the mid 1960's, NASA was in a situation similar to where they are today - looking to send astronauts to the moon, but needing high-resolution images of the surface to evaluate potential landing sites for the Apollo missions. To get those images, NASA knew they would need to send spacecraft to the moon to map the lunar surface, but since the technology didn't exist then to use high-resolution digital sensors (as NASA is doing today with the LRO mission), they needed a different approach.

One that Kodak developed.

Imaging Unit of Lunar Orbiter

Looking at it now, the solution that was devised for these missions was really amazing. As described on NASA's web page for these missions, the imaging unit in these Lunar Orbiters consisted of a dual-lens camera (to capture both high- and low-resolution pictures), a film processing unit, a readout scanner, and a film handling apparatus. Film passed through the camera as the unit orbited the moon, capturing images of the lunar surface as it flew by. The film was then processed and scanned, and the images were then transmitted back to Earth - basically, the entire unit was a combination camera, mini-lab, and TV station.

All operating while orbiting the moon, over 200,000 miles from Earth.

First view of Earth taken from the moon (from Lunar Orbiter 1)

The Lunar Orbiter missions were an unqualified success, collectively photographing 99% of the moon's surface with a resolution of 60 meters or better, and providing the information needed for the safe landing of the Apollo missions. Today, one of these imaging cameras - made for a Lunar Orbiter mission that never flew - is on display as a part of the Technology Collection at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. Todd Gustavson, curator of Technology from George Eastman House, has put together an excellent video podcast about this imaging system - be sure to check it out.

In 2004, the Kodak organization involved in this work was incorporated into the Space Systems Division of ITT, where they continue developing imaging systems for earth-orbiting satellites today. But through programs like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (as well as other orbiters around Mars and Venus, plus the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station), Kodak still remains a key participant in the space program, providing world-class imaging technology that is used throughout the solar system.

Just as we have for over 40 years.

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Editor's Note: Steve Sasson, the inventor of the digital camera, will be inducted today into the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame in San Diego, CA.

In December of 1975, after a year of piecing together a bunch of new technology in a back lab at the Elmgrove Plant in Rochester, we were ready to try it.  "It" being a rather odd-looking collection of digital circuits that we desperately tried to convince ourselves was a portable camera.  It had a lens that we took from a used parts bin from the Super 8 movie camera production line downstairs from our little lab on the second floor in Bldg 4.  On the side of our portable contraption, we shoehorned in a portable digital cassette instrumentation recorder.  Add to that 16 nickel cadmium batteries, a highly temperamental new type of CCD imaging area array, an a/d converter implementation stolen from a digital voltmeter application, several dozen digital and analog circuits all wired together on approximately half a dozen circuit boards, and you have our interpretation of what a portable all electronic still camera might look like. 

Vintage 1975 portable all electronic still camera

It was a camera that didn't use any film to capture still images - a camera that would capture images using a CCD imager and digitize the captured scene and store the digital info on a standard cassette.  It took 23 seconds to record the digitized image to the cassette.  The image was viewed by removing the cassette from the camera and placing it in a custom playback device.  This playback device incorporated a cassette reader and a specially built frame store.  This custom frame store received the data from the tape, interpolated the 100 captured lines to 400 lines, and generated a standard NTSC video signal, which was then sent to a television set.

The playback device and TV

There you have it.  No film required to capture and no printing required to view your snapshots.  That's what we demonstrated to many internal Kodak audiences throughout 1976.  In what has got to be one of the most insensitive choices of demonstration titles ever, we called it "Film-less Photography".  Talk about warming up your audience! 

Side-by-side comparison - Hardcopy vs. Film-less Photography

After taking a few pictures of the attendees at the meeting and displaying them on the TV set in the room, the questions started coming.  Why would anyone ever want to view his or her pictures on a TV?  How would you store these images?  What does an electronic photo album look like?  When would this type of approach be available to the consumer?  Although we attempted to address the last question by applying Moore's law to our architecture (15 to 20 years to reach the consumer), we had no idea how to answer these or the many other challenges that were suggested by this approach. An internal report was written and a patent was granted on this concept in 1978 (US 4,131,919).  I kept the prototype camera with me as I moved throughout the company over the last 30 years, mostly as a personal reminder of this most fun project.  Outside of the patent, there was no public disclosure of our work until 2001.

The "we" in this narrative was largely the people of the Kodak Apparatus Division Research Laboratory in the mid 1970's and, in particular, several enormously talented technicians - Rick Osiecki, Bob DeYager and Jim Schueckler.  All were key to building the camera and playback system.  I especially remember working with Jim for many hours in the lab bringing this concept to life.  Finally, I remember my visionary supervisor, the late Gareth Lloyd, who supported this concept and helped enormously in its presentation to our internal world at Kodak. In thinking back on it, one could not have had a better environment in which to "be crazy."

Many developments have happened between this early work and today.  Personal computers, the Internet, wide bandwidth connections and personal desktop photographic printing are just a few of these.  It is funny now to look back on this project and realize that we were not really thinking of this as the world's first digital camera. We were looking at it as a distant possibility.  Maybe a line from the technical report written at the time sums it up best:   

"The camera described in this report represents a first attempt demonstrating a photographic system which may, with improvements in technology, substantially impact the way pictures will be taken in the future."

But in reality, we had no idea ...

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You may have seen the Business Week article in which Antonio Perez said that when he peered into a microscope in the Rochester, NY, Research & Development lab in 2003, he realized that Kodak "had it all here ... The Holy Grail of Inkjet Printing." Part of what Antonio was looking at during that visit was Kodak's internally developed MEMS printhead technology.

The capabilities of our KODAK EASYSHARE printers depend in large part on the innovative design of the printhead. In this posting, we will describe the technology behind the printhead with its 3,840 firing chambers, each comprising a heater, expansion chamber and nozzle. The challenge for the Kodak design team was to come up with a printhead that could deliver the ink very precisely onto the paper (or other media), handling photos and text with the same excellent quality. To further complicate our task, the printhead needed to be very durable and last through many ink tank changes while maintaining superb image quality. This would make replacement ink cartridges far less expensive, since they would not have to include the costly printhead (it could stay on the printer). Early work in Kodak Research on Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) provided us with the foundations to design and build a unique thermal inkjet drop ejector. It provides very high quality photos and text, at good printing speeds.

Cross-Section of Inkjet Printhead

The printhead uses heat to control the formation and delivery of the ink droplet:

• When the heater is pulsed on, it heats the ink and causes a vapor bubble to expand. This pushes ink out of the nozzle, where surface tension pulls it into a droplet.
• After the heater is pulsed off, the bubble is vented to atmosphere and the chamber refills with ink.
• The chamber is now ready to be fired again.

Thermal profile of a firing chamber

In most thermal inkjet printers, the ink in the nozzle that is not ejected collapses back onto the heater with substantial force, wearing it out over time. In our design, the vapor bubble vents to the atmosphere, so there is essentially no mechanical wear on the heater. In addition, the material forming the heater does not change over time as much as most thin film heater materials. Because of this, the heater not only lasts though many ink tank changes, but in addition the characteristics of the drops are very stable over long lifetimes.

Most inkjet printheads have a separate nozzle plate attached to the integrated circuit silicon, forming a sandwich with fluid passages in between. These components need to be aligned with great precision, which is inherently difficult. Misalignment results in dot placement errors. By building nozzles directly into our printhead, we eliminated this problem and gained precision. Our nozzles are formed using only thin film semiconductor fabrication processes; a monolithic structure, which allows alignment tolerances that would be impossible for the traditional two-plate systems. We chose to make our nozzles out of glass, an inorganic material, because it can be shaped very precisely and uniformly. Since the layer is homogeneous, nothing wears down and print quality remains constant. Using this state of the art silicon fabrication technology, Kodak is able to place dots on paper with very high precision which, when combined with Kodak's nano-particle pigment ink and microporous media technologies, results in Kodak lab-quality photos.

Exploded view of printhead and ink tanks

Very fast printing speed

We chose a nozzle layout to provide high frequency firing, and warming pulses that would vary to maintain uniform drop size as the printhead heats up. In this way image quality remains consistent when printing in different room conditions or during long print jobs.

PRINTHEAD AND INK TANK ASSEMBLY

MEMS Fabrication Technology Thermal Inkjet Printhead. Our goals of unsurpassed photo quality, excellent quality black text, and very fast printing speed, as well as providing industry leading ease of use and cost per print, led us to a printhead architecture, featuring a 3840 nozzle printhead that is part of the printer, not part of the replaceable ink supply. We utilize a total of 6 inks, one for text black, four photo colors - cyan, magenta, yellow and photo black - and a clear protective ink. The text black is provided in a separate tank, and the 5 photo inks are provided in a single color tank. We also utilize two different nozzle sizes resulting in 2.7 pico-liter and 6.5 pico-liter drop sizes. Both tanks are mounted on the printhead at all times, so the KODAK EASYSHARE All-in-One Printer, with its two paper trays, can print photos, text or mixed graphics documents any time, without any swapping of tanks.

Working on this project was a great experience. An inkjet writing system is a complex integration of multiple technologies. Kodak has the unique situation of having expertise in all of these areas. This allowed us to integrate the subsystems and make tradeoffs between the technologies to optimize the product for the customer. This Rochester, NY-based team was hand selected and is comprised of experts in media development, pigment ink technology, ink jet physics, MEMS fabrication, image science, and printhead design. The team has incredible scientists and capabilities, allowing the technology to be developed in record time. It has been a personally rewarding experience to work with such a high-powered and cooperative team.

We hope that you enjoy using this technology as much as we enjoyed developing it!

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