Restored moon-landing footage fascinates space-watchers
Newly restored footage of the first moon walk was released today to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing.
Nasa’s refurbished videos capture details not clear from the original copies, some of which have not been viewed for decades.
The space agency employed a specialist Hollywood film restoration company to help clean up the images originally beamed to Earth from Apollo 11 on July 20 1969.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s first steps on the moon’s surface were captured by a single small video camera aboard the lunar module.
Back on Earth, hundreds of millions of people witnessed the achievement after the black and white images were beamed backed and converted for standard broadcast TV use.
The videos were originally stored on giant reels of tapes that contained 15 minutes of video along with 13 other channels of live data from the moon.
But in the 1970s and 1980s, Nasa wiped and reused some of the tapes due to a shortage.
The remaining recordings have been subjected to state-of-the-art restoring techniques.
Some 15 scenes representing the most significant moments of the three-and-a-half hours that Armstrong and Aldrin spent on the lunar surface have been enhanced.
The pictures are not new, but the quality of the images is. In the original grainy footage, Armstrong’s face visor could not be seen. But in the refurbished video not only is the visor clear, but viewers can also see a reflection in it.
Richard Nafzger, engineer at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, oversaw television processing at the ground tracking sites during the Apollo 11 mission.
He said: “The restoration is ongoing and may produce even better video. The restoration project is scheduled to be completed in September and will provide the public, future historians and the National Archives with the highest quality video of this historic event.”
