Apollo 11 on the moon

When Apollo 11 landed on the moon in the summer of 1969, video images streamed to Earth, first to NASA tracking stations in California and Australia, and from there via Houston to an eager television audience. The moon-landing story of summer 2006 is decidedly less flattering to the space agency's image--it turns out that NASA can't find the original tapes of the unprecedented event.

In a posting to its Web site on Tuesday, NASA tells how the tapes were made, speculates as to where they might yet turn up, and serves notice that it expects the mystery to be solved: "Despite the challenges of the search, NASA does not consider the tapes to be lost."

August 16, 2006 11:03 AM PDT

Photo by: NASA