Yes, I just explore these archives as a hobby and sometimes do a bit of amateur processing on the files. There tends to be some embargo period (a few months to a couple of years) where only the mission team has access to the data, and they decide how/to whom share it. But then again, they are all scientists and willing to share knowledge 99.9% of the time -- so a fellow researcher will probably be able to get a copy of the data if they are polite and ask for it accordingly.
As I'm just "playing" with the files, I don't mind waiting a few months/years to get access to full "scientific grade" readings from incredible complex machines and systems. And if the "raw" data is not easily available, they also usually do provide processed images as part of the missions public outreach campaigns (usually the ones that are found on Wikipedia).
Gonna chime in here to comment that most NASA missions (and ESA too) provide the scientific data for download free of charge, under Public Domain or CC licenses. If it's for scientific purposes, it's not just good manners, but rather a requirement to cite the proper dataset (that also gives you the bonus of citing a respected source, so it's a win-win). Thing is that many people doesn't even know where to look for!
And it doesn't help that some missions manage their own archives differently, and there's a lot of terminology to learn on your own. One of the complete opposites of that, which was a joy, was the New Horizons archive which, at one point, you could download from a torrent! For example, if you wanted to see V3 of the Arrokoth encounter from 2019, you'd go to: https://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/holdings/nh-a-lorri-3-kem1-v3.0...
Again, New Horizons is a bit of a rare case in which they went for super accessible data for everyone. PDS itself is a great system, but many missions will just upload a bit of data to PDS and then manage the rest some other way (Cassini for example has only a couple of instruments on PDS, and you have to go to some other URL if you want uncalibrated but automatically processed images on JPEG format[0], but yet another place (to which I've lost the link to and I can't find on mobile) for the full, science-grade dataset).
A great resource is OPUS[1] too, however I find it's UI a bit difficult, and in the end I prefer to download full datasets and just explore them on my own rather than going with those online browsers. For example, if you wanted to check the Voyager images of Neptune, you'd go to this massive URL[2]. Quick tip: once you've configured the filter you want to apply, the Search button is on the top left -- this is the kind of usability thing I mentioned, buttons and links aren't quite where you'd expect them. Oh and there's a limit to how many things you can select for download at once. And it's all dynamically loaded, and on and on and on. Which is why, as I said before, I generally prefer to just download the full GB sized dataset and explore it on my own.
For sufficiently dim targets, you absolutely need minutes long exposure. If you go for shorter bursts, you face two main challenges:
1) Not enough photons reach the sensor to distinguish the object you are trying to photograph from the noise floor of the sensor. This is by far the biggest reason to go for a tracking mount.
2) You bog your computer down in post processing. 50x1 minute images are far simpler to align than 500x6 seconds images.
Combine (1) and (2), and there's barely any reason to go for untracked shots. As for satellites, planes, clouds, or other kind of transient phenomena that can potentially ruin a shot, that's where you apply some kind of clipping over data (usually sigma clipping or some variation of it) and problem solved.
Changing orbital plane requires delta V, and the Shuttle had barely enough to make it to LEO (the highest it ever went was servicing the Hubble).
Cargo capacity... Not that much really, since you're carrying yourself a whole lot of orbiter already. It had a large volume in the cargo bay, and the mentioned ability to retrieve things in that cargo bay.
But yes, DoD/military influenced the design of the Shuttle. It just turns out they never used the capabilities they requested. And so you end up with a craft that makes little sense for civilian use, except for the building of a massive space station in orbit and eventual servicing of satellites.
For SLS a group looked into making boosters powered by modernized F-1's... Turns out a lot of knowledge about welding them had been lost. They managed to get an old unflown F-1A to work, but it's a bit unclear how much they managed to do with the new design, the F-1B. Wikipedia[0] has a few details and some links, but it falls short of telling the end fate of this effort.
Obviously, the F-1B booster wasn't picked for the SLS and they went with the improved 5-segment SRBs[1].
Right, that's the impression I got from reading. And it looks like we have regained that technology, which is what threw me off the remark. Will take a look at that paper, however I'm totally a stranger to most geo-something sciences, just a regular software engineer here (with quite a bit of scientific curiosity though).
> What's the point of the Space Shuttle if launches were more expensive than disposable rockets? What's the point of the Buran, if the Soviets didn't feel like they need an answer to the space shuttle "just in case", even though they couldn't see any point in the shuttle design (except as a nuke carrier)?
Rather than nukes, I always thought the main advantage of the Shuttle was the ability to bring things back to Earth. Which it did, a few times:
When then Shuttle was proposed, this was one of the main selling points. Having used it just 4 times over 133 missions... Well, that's not what was envisioned.
> In our unfortunately light polluted night sky we can barely see the stars, but shouldn't the astronauts see the earth within a shimmer of billion stars?
No, you have to be in the night side, or looking into the void (no Earth surface visible, definitely not the Sun in sight, not any part of your spacecraft being shined upon) for your eyes to adjust to the darkness and then you get to see the stars. Being near the Moon, I'd add "no moon surface" to that list.
> Or is the source material not showing stars due to a lack of exposure?
I'm not sure there... Film behaves differently than image sensors. Maybe if we had access to the negatives you could do some chemical magic to bring in detail. I don't know how hard/destructive that could be on the negatives, as film isn't a medium I've ever really used. Grew up in the 90's with a few film cameras, but digital took over before I had the chance to seriously get into photography and was also far cheaper (so, easier to pick up as a hobby for a teenager). Now I'm into digital image processing and that's a totally different beast on its own.
From the lengthy blog post under the images, it'd seem he used those archives. I have the impression that I've seen these pictures as TIF files instead of JPGs somewhere (the Internet Archive perhaps?), but I can't remember precisely now. Maybe the author used those, as I imagine they'd give a bit more leeway and flexibility in a restoration effort.
Okay, I came here to talk about how the images are a bit soft and a quick, subtle pass of Richardson-Lucy deconvolution restores some detail (and enhances the film grain, that's a plus for me but some people may find it a bit too much -- it is still there in the pictures though).
And then I read your comment and you totally throw me into a Wikipedia rabbit hole with the Roman concrete... Speaking of which, what do you mean we can't make Roman concrete nowadays? Wikipedia even says that there are corporations and municipalities looking into it as a viable, environmental-friendly, long-lasting alternative to regular concrete[0] !
In theory the shuttle promised sustainability. But as the years went by it proved to be more expensive and almost 5x deadlier than the Apollo stack.
The shuttle did make sense for some things it was never used (DoD influence there) and it was an incredible piece of technology. It was also the workhorse for a big part of the ISS. But then again, that all happened in LEO, and different things could have been achieved by just iterating over Apollo/Saturn, in LEO and further away.
As I'm just "playing" with the files, I don't mind waiting a few months/years to get access to full "scientific grade" readings from incredible complex machines and systems. And if the "raw" data is not easily available, they also usually do provide processed images as part of the missions public outreach campaigns (usually the ones that are found on Wikipedia).