ECSTATIC space officials at Nasa could be about to unveil one of their most stunning discoveries for 40 years — new and amazingly clear footage of the first moon landing. The release of the new images next month could be one of the most talked about events of the summer.
The television images the world has been used to seeing of the historic moment when Neil Armstrong descended down a ladder onto the moon’s surface in 1969 is grainy, blurry and dark. The following scenes, in which the astronauts move around the lunar lander, are so murky it is difficult to make out exactly what is going on, causing conspiracy theorists to claim the entire Apollo 11 mission was an elaborate fraud. However, viewers have only ever seen such poor quality footage because the original analogue tapes containing the pictures beamed direct from the lunar surface were lost almost as soon as they were recorded.
Instead, a poor quality copy made from a 16mm camera pointing at a heavily compressed image on a black and white TV screen has been the only record of the event.
The Sunday Express can now reveal that the missing tapes containing the original high quality images have been found. 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. The tapes show in much more detail than almost anyone has previously seen the surface of the moon beneath the patriotic symbol of the US flag. Crucially, they could once and for all dispel 40 years of wild conspiracy theories.
The low grade, dark and grainy television pictures that were beamed around the world on July 21 1969 were intended to give Americans just a glimpse of their country’s greatest exploratory achievement. Technology at the time meant Neil Armstrong’s film, recorded using a special lunar camera, went through a series of processes, each of which marked a step down in quality before it hit people’s living rooms. The final loss in quality came when Nasa made its US recording of the event—the one always seen in archive footage—by simply placing a 16mm film camera in front of a television monitor in the US.
However, it is the original magnetic tapes recorded back at the Parkes Observatory in Australia that contained the unadulterated and highest quality images. To the later horror of researchers and scientists, it was those tapes that went missing. Houston finally admitted to the world it had a problem four years ago and launched a desperate plea for help, issuing a ‘wanted’ notice with clues to where the elusive tapes might be. Most suspected they had been shipped from Australia to an American archive and then mislaid. However, recently scientists looking for other data stumbled across a number of Nasa tapes in a storage facility in Perth, Australia.
They thought they merely contained details of moon dust from several Appollo missions. But Nasa confirmed to the Sunday Express that they also contain the video data of the Apollo 11 landing.
Of course this new video can be fake, and people will still believe what they want.
The Hasselblads are still laying on the moon. They were all left behind. I think somewhere between 3 and 7 of them are there, preserved in the vacuum of space. Might be drying out a bit, however. Go get ’em!
Bad news though: I read about this search months (maybe a year or more) ago and the only machines in existence that could play these tapes were about to be scrapped!
I don’t believe these any more than I believe the bogus pictures of the so called “Kent State” killings. Same era same BS.
Wait, so are you saying the Kent State shootings didn’t happen? That’s a new one on me.
So NASA had great footage of one of the most important events in human history, and someone lost em. Just forgot where they were. Where’s the BS meter?
#35
If they haven’t lost it, you would have said “such a clear picture in 1969? Bullshit! It’s fake” anyways, wouldn’t you? 🙂
Yeah, you’re a hoax of homo sapiens too.
Next week they will be out with some old Elvis footage.
Oh, come on. The question is extremely pertinent. I keep my own archive of thousands of foolish pictures I took everywhere as a hobby, and NASA loses footage of the most important event of human history ever caught on film? Hundreds of bogus tabloid stories begin with that “long lost, finally found” plot line, including “Elvis alive and well in some Polynesian island.” We’re morally obligated to raise the question.
According to bad astronomy/Phil Plait this appears to be a hoax.
blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/28/lost-apollo-11-video-tapes-found/
They flew few times to the Moon, not only once.
For government it would be impossible to keep one faked moon landing under cover for 40 years, and you “hoax believers” want to tell us that US Govt was able to keep FEW hoaxed moon landings, all spanning few years, under covers?! LOL!
Soviet Russia would have trumpet the hoax on first page of “Pravda” for years, hahahaha!
Why do you think soviets have never “allied” with all the hoax-believers? Simply because they knew it were real moon landings not hoaxes, they were watching and observing it themselves.
Gimme a break and get a brains, hoax-morons.
Hey, Somebody_Else: Thanks for that link. Sure answered my questions about the poor video quality.
# 32 faxon said,”The Hasselblads are still laying on the moon. … Go get ‘em!”
Thanks. I might just do that. Soon as my Tardis gets out of the garage.
#31 Nimby asked:
It’s a kind of short-term temporary burn-in. There is a technical term for it, but I can’t remember what it is. Remember, this was shot in direct sun, more direct than you get at the bottom of our atmosphere. When the astronaut crosses in front of the camera, it takes a few seconds for the image that had been in that spot since the camera was turned on to fade away.
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# 34 jccalhoun, quoting # 23 TruthBeKnown, said:
I guess some people are just deniers. Me, I don’t believe there are any such things as China or Interstate Highways. All made up to scare us in our beds. Great Wall, indeed! Bah! Humbug!
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How could NASA lose the tapes? Easy — they never HAD them! These were recorded at the giant radio dish in Australia. At certain times of day, that was the only place on Earth that had the equipment and position to receive the signals from the Moon. This was not a NASA installation, but a completely separate scientific institute run by the Australians and the British. They recorded the transmisions and re-transmitted the data over the slow, noisy terrestrial communication channels of the time. The original tapes were put away to make room for the next project(s), and people transferred in and out, and eventually there wasn’t anybody there who knew where they were.
[Psst, buddy, this whole found tapes story may be a hoax.]
Oops! Well, it sure sounded plausible, didn’t it? Anyway, I do remember reading about the great help NASA received from the Australian antenna. There was even a movie made about it, I think. […] Yes, “The Dish” with Sam Neill.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/
I really hope the whole story turns out to be true.
There never was a race for space in the conventional sense. Russian Cosmonauts were well versed at subterfuge from the get go and learned to be economical with the truth. To my knowledge NO orbiting satellites, or the ISS travel in the Van Allen belts, particularly the South Atlantic Anomaly. The US has cozied up to the USSR before…uh remember WW2. To simulate a moon landing is not that difficult. Why is it that the Apollo apologists are always running scared? If the lunar landings happened plain and simple why are we having this conversation. Keep your fantasy.
Great band name: the Apollo Apologists!
Okay, I think I get it now; there is no moon; it’s just an image projected on the great inverted bowl over out heads (which is run by gnomes and kobolds) by NASA. The sun is projected by GE. The stars are the night lights of the kobolds’ kids.
I tell ya, there is no China, and Interstate highways are a myth, as are Ryan Seacrest, betel nuts and cyclotrons. Yeh, that’s the ticket!
Where is the “clear” video from the mars landers? We have it for the moon but not from Mars?