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 release of the new images next month could be one of the most talked about events of the summer.
Nope, Cirkus Jackson will still dominate the news.
Will this prove that Charlie Smith was mistaken?
NASA? Moon footage? Who cares????
MICHAEL JACKSON!! MICHAEL JACKSON!! MICHAEL JACKSON…!!!!!!!
How do you “lose” footage???
Ahhh… the REAL “Moonwalk”……
#5
bravo!
Phuk Jackson!!! I want to see the clear tapes.
The release of these tapes will certainly not dispel the conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists are so convinced of their stories that they ignore all evidence counter to their claims, no matter how devastating the evidence is. Just like religious people.
#4. John, you may be hanging around AC way too much.
Cant Wait to see the tapes…. Sorry MJ..somethings are bigger than even you!!! RIP…now show me the tapes!!!
I still remember everything about that day, what I had for breakfast, the weather, school, what people said. Total recall. Strange, how that event punctuated civilization.
#8, you’re absolutely right. Once someone makes up his mind without data, all the data in the world won’t change his belief. It does become religion.
#8
Do me a favor, I’ve seen all the evidence for both sides of the story, can someone please explain to me how these guys survived the immense amount of radiation outside of our van allen belt? This has remained the most damning evidence for the moon landing, in my opinion.
Curiously my distinct memory of the event had me seeing it in a location into which I moved (and was not in before moving) 3 years later.
I must be mistaken.
Imagine how much better it would look if they had CGI back in those days.
#13 – some info found about radiation and the Van Allen belt.
Where do you get your information about radiation? Wherever it is, I strongly urge you to ditch that source and read a real textbook on the subject.
The van Allen radiation belts are zones of energetic charged particles (mostly protons and electrons) trapped by Earth’s magnetic field. Lead is a terrible shield against particle radiation because of a phenomenon called bremmstrahlung. Put simply, the absorption by the lead of an energetic charged particle causes the subsequent emission of an x-ray. Your shield actually generates radiation, and more penetrating radiation than it was supposed to shield against!
You need light metals such as aluminium, plastics, or water to shield against particle radiation, and the shield doesn’t have to be very thick to be effective. Now, guess what the Apollo spacecraft was made of. Aluminium. The spacesuits were plastic and metal fibres. In short, very effective shields. The most energetic part of the van Allen belts was traversed in about two hours on each mission (slightly longer on Apollo 14). Outside the belts the radiation level drops off considerably.
Now, on to the second part of the question. Radiaition does fog film, and it does cause harmful effects in humans. However, only in high enough quantities. Do you happen to know quantitatively what the radiaition environment is on the Moon? You happen to be sitting ina steady background radiaition level right now, but it isn’t fogging your film or harming your body.
And finally, if it was true that the radiation was lethal, don’t you think someone would have noticed by now? NASA does not have a monopoly on space exploration. Literally dozens of satellites from NASA, ESA, the USSR, all sorts of places, have been sent into space specifically to study the radiation out there. Not only that, many commercial satellites spend their entire operational life within the van Allen belts. If the radiation was as high as you say the satellites would fail and communications companies all over the world would go bankrupt pretty quickly. No-one before Apollo suggested it was too dangerous. No-one after has said it was too dangerous for Apollo to have happened. Whilst there is concern over radiation hazards for future missions, that is purely the consequence of the planned duration of those missions. Months or years in deep space require very different radiation protection measures than a short trip of about two weeks.
#11
you must have been in summer school.
Oh, have they finished it. I expect great things after 40 years of development.
#13, http://www.redzero.demon.co.uk/moonhoax will answer ALL of your moon landing questions. I can’t wait to see the clearer footage!
Hopefully it will be better than the Chinese space walk.
[sarcasm]
Did they find this in the vaults at ILM?
[/sarcasm]
I don’t believe these any more than I believe the bogus pictures of the so called “Kent State” killings. Same era same BS.
#17. in the southern hemisphere, it was winter.
#8 or global warming nuts.
They just reshot it using modern technology to make it more realistic. If they could have done this in 1969 they would have.
They didn’t “lose” the clear footage, they had to wait until they could MAKE it.
No one can explain how they could “lose” this footage in such a carefully planned operation. They can show you each bolt and rock that “came back from space”, including its serial number, but they “lost” the footage of the most important thing that ever happened.
How stupid do you have to be to believe this?
Never went, never will.
All you guys who don’t think we went…How exactly do you explain the laser targets there? They are used monthly if not daily.
# 27
You do not need a human to place something on the moon.
I’m looking forward to seeing this. It’s one of those memories that really sticks in my mind.
True, but that still means we sent something or someone to the moon. The other problem is that the conspiracy this would require is too big to be kept hidden. I mean come on. This is our government we are talking about.
About a minute in: was that an AMC Gremlin reflected in the faceplate of the astronaut?
Seriously, I believe we went to the moon. Don’t you skeptics believe the Russians were monitoring that capsule all the way down? But I do wonder about how NASA lost the footage. Wasn’t it in that box in the warehouse right next to the Ark?
The other question I’d like to have answered is why do the moving photos look so ghostly? Sometimes, objects are damned near transparent! I realize they were shooting at a reduced frame rate but, still, our video technology was better than that. Now the film images were amazing! Made me want to go out and buy a Hasselblad camera.