Have the Lost Apollo 11 Tapes Been Found?

There’s an article on the Bad Astronomy blog about how the tapes containing the original high quality footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing may have been located by NASA. If this is true, say goodbye to the grainy, poor quality images you’re currently used to. I hope it’s true.

You’ve seen the footage: Neil Armstrong in his bulky suit, stepping off the lunar module’s footpad. …Well, it turns out that’s because this iconic scene, shown millions of times in the ensuing years, is not the original footage. It was actually taken using a 16mm camera aimed at a screen at NASA’s Mission Control room. And the screen was only showing highly compressed data, so the end result is the lousy stuff we’ve grown used to.

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