NASA Refurbishes Video of Moon Landing

With Original Video Grainy, Space Agency Enhances Video Copies of Apollo 11 Landing

(AP)  With the help of Hollywood, those historic, grainy images of the first men on the moon never looked better. NASA unveiled refurbished video Thursday of the July 20, 1969, moonwalk restored by the same company that sharpened up the movie "Casablanca."

NASA lost its original moon landing videotapes and after a three-year search, officials have concluded they were probably erased. That original live video was ghostlike and grainy.

NASA and a Hollywood film restoration company took television video copies of what Apollo 11 beamed to Earth 40 years ago and made the pictures look sharper.

NASA emphasized the video isn't "new" - just better quality.

"There's nothing being created; there's nothing being manufactured," said NASA senior engineer Dick Nafzger, who's in charge of the project.

But some details seem new because of their sharpness. Originally, Armstrong's face visor was too fuzzy to be seen clearly. The refurbished video shows his visor and a reflection in it.

The $230,000 refurbishing effort is only three weeks into a months-long project, and only 40 percent of the work has been done. But it does show improvements in four snippets: Armstrong walking down the ladder, which includes the face visor image; Buzz Aldrin walking down the ladder; the two astronauts reading a plaque they left on the moon; the planting of the flag on the moon.

The original videos beamed to earth were stored on giant reels of tapes that each contained 15 minutes of video, along with 13 other channels of live data from the moon. In the 1970s and 1980s, NASA had a shortage of the tapes and erased about 200,000 of those tapes and reused them. That's apparently what happened to the famous moon landing footage.

Nafzger praised the restored work for its crispness. The restoration company, Lowry Digital of Burbank, California, also refurbished "Star Wars" and James Bond films, along with "Casablanca."

The company noted that the latter film had a pixel count 10 times higher than the moon video, meaning the moon footage was fuzzier than that vintage movie and more of a challenge in one sense.

But the moon video also was three continuous hours, not chopped up like movies are, which made some of the work easier, said Lowry president Mike Inchalik.

Of all the video the company has dealt with, he said, "This is by far and away the lowest quality."

The restoration used four video sources: CBS News originals; kinescopes from the National Archives; a video from Australia that received the transmission of the original moon video; and camera shots looking at a TV monitor.

Both Nafzger and Inchalik said they went to extremes to enhance the video as conservatively as possible.

[proudmilvet]

I wish we could send Rush Limbaugh to the Moon, but no Rocket would be that powerful to lift that heavy a payload!

[OregonJames]

Two hundred thousand tapes represents terrabytes of information, and if you will look back to the seventies you can see that the price of that much computer storage then was millions of dollars. Reusing those tapes saved NASA tons of money. Management was pinching pennies and looking towards the future. Old tapes of the past were just of lesser value than the future projects that required those tapes. Recycling was just a way of saving money.

[rushlimpdrug]

Wow!
You're kidding right?

If you are not, you are a great candidate for working
at NASA.

[mary-miami]

I am old enough to remember having seen the moon landing on television as it took place. It was one of those historical moments that we never forget. I was just a kid then, but I felt proud for the United States having accomplished that before any other country.

[grabandgo]

Now I can sleep better at night.
Our tax dollars, hard at work!

[ianlou]

Money well spent.
How could NASA lose the film evidence to one of America's proudest moments? Are they that short sighted?

[mightyh]

MASA lost the moonlanding tape or it probably got erased. That's kinda hard to swallow. Do they really believe that the public is too gullible to believe that a very important historic tape like this was "lost"? These tapes are still very much in existence in some "very private hands." I wonder how much in terms of dollars will these tapes amount to in a private collection? Why were these tapes not deposited in the National Archives? With all the millions of public funds that the NASA has wasted, are we really supposed to believe that the moonlanding tapes were probably erased and recycled to save NASA some money? That's a lame duck alibi. Somebody should investigate higher up because those tapes are still very much in existence and their value will never decrease in time. We may have a better resolution of these event now but somebody still got the real McCoy.

[johninpennsyl]

Who's starring in the new moon landing tapes? Billy Bob Thornton was excellent as a NASA guy in Armageddon.
They erased the tapes? C'mon.
Some people might be suspicous of a boo-boo like that,but I love a good movie.Real or otherwise.

[rafterman1]

Oh oh. Now, just waiting for all the "moon landing was fake" nutbag conspiracy theorists to start coming out of the woodwork.

[txlakeside]

Nasa was very instrumental in your "modern day" moaning and groaning on the "INTERNET". Some are just dumb as dirt!

[rushlimpdrug]

Really?
Does this mean they've saved my life Mr Taxlakeside?

They actually invented the internet? Wow!

I'm thinking the article is about something other than
NASA inventing the internet, so I commented about something
the article mentioned.

But then you being an expert on everything can expertly
comment on anything.

Thanks for the clarification.

Think I'll have a donut now.
I wonder, did NASA also invent the donut?

[rushlimpdrug]

"NASA lost its original moon landing videotapes"

Yeah, well perhaps NASA needs to get lost.

Many Americans have had it from these reetarded
"rocket scientists".

They are looking more like a "bomb happy squad".

The ONE thing they should be most proud of, and
the loose or "erase" the record of the event.

Way to go losers.

[grabandgo]

You are right on the money!