16 July 2009

Back to the moon

As part of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing NASA is spending US$230,000 to restore video footage of the first mission that put humans on the moon.

NASA lost the original video in the 1980s when old tapes were inadvertently erased and re0used.  The lunar mission sent video pictures from the moon using a format unusable by television.  NASA converted the images into a TV-friendly format and it is those converted images that were broadcast around the world.  in the process, much was lost, apparently.

The restoration project involved a combination of footage found in video archives around the world and some 36 hours of video that survived in NASA’s own archive.

Some of the restored footage was unveiled Thursday on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch of Cape Canaveral. There is also a NASA website containing still and video images of the Apollo 11 mission as well as NASA’s Apollo program page. Google also has a Google Moon site which covers the lunar landings from Apollo 11 until the last mission Apollo 17.

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