just came across this.
wow, would like to have a look!
yeah, i remember the grainy lousy images, would be cool to see 'em all crisp
and clear.
b.w.
formatting link
NASA reacquires original Moon landing footage
Tapes discovered in Oz, agency confirms
By Lester Haines
Posted in Space, 29th June 2009 11:02 GMT
NASA has seemingly confirmed that the original taped recordings of the first
Moon landing have turned up in Australia - almost three years after the
agency admitted it had carelessly mislaid them.
The Parkes Observatory in Australia captured the 1969 live images straight
from the lunar surface to magnetic tape. What the US public saw, though was
a compressed feed "downsized" to local TV resolutions, while NASA itself
grabbed a 16mm copy from a TV monitor.
The Parkes Observatory tapes were apparently shipped to the Goddard Space
Flight Centre in Maryland a year after the landing, but in 2006 NASA
confirmed that despite an extensive search, their whereabouts was unknown.
However, the Sunday Express now claims the footage was actually gathering
dust in a storage facility in Perth among other tapes containing Moon dust
data - presumably the same material which Oz scientists hoped to run through
a vintage IBM 729 Mark V tape drive earlier this year.
A NASA spokesman confirmed the Apollo 11 landing recordings are the real
deal, and said: "We?re talking about the same tapes."
He added: ?At this point, I?m not prepared to discuss what has or has not
been found. The research team is preparing its final report and we?ll
release those findings publicly in the coming weeks.?
The Sunday Express notes that "if the visual data can be retrieved, NASA is
set to reveal them to the world as a key plank of celebrations to mark the
40th anniversary of the landings next month".
Whether the world will finally enjoy high-quality pics of Aldrin and
Armstrong strolling the Moon's surface remains to be seen. When NASA coughed
to having lost the original tapes, John Sarkissian of the Parkes Observatory
noted that even if a machine could be found to replay them, they would be
"so old and fragile, it's not certain they could even be played". ®