I found this very interesting: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/22/destination_moon/ They have to create a self contained camera, film processor, scanner and transmitter to map the surface of the moon. Incredible stuff.
Extremely interesting. Thank you very much for posting the link. I enjoyed it thoroughly, from the "bunch of plumbers" comment, to the description of the bureaucracy, to the rescue and restoration of the tapes and readers. It made me think fondly of projects I'd been on where a teams "flying under management radar" created the DEET diagnostic computer at Cummins, the first RaVe voice system at Visteon, three industrial cameras. And not fondly of the bureaucracy that destroyed my RaVe II, Visteon Voice, and other projects I've been involved in.
Interesting indeed, though I may add that the first pictures form the "dark" backside were taken by Lunik 3 in 1959, using a similar technique, not by the Lunar Orbiters. That's why many of the features there are named like "Gagarin","Mare Moscoviense", etc.
I had posted earlier a link to a Computerworld article about this from a computer-nerd point of view at link