Moonwalk footage being restored after original video lost
A sample of Lowry Digital's restoration of Apollo 11 moon landing.
(Credit: NASA)As NASA celebrates the 40th anniversary of man's first trip to the moon, the space agency is taking some hits for failing to preserve the best historical record of the Apollo 11 flight.
NASA acknowledged on Thursday that the original TV footage of the moon landing on July 20, 1969, was accidentally erased. Someone wanted to make room on the videotape reel that stored the footage. So, did NASA's goof rob future generations from watching what was arguably mankind's greatest achievement?
Not hardly. Remember at NASA, failure is not an option.
A Hollywood post-production house was enlisted to lend some movie magic and restore the images by digitally stitching together copies of the flight retrieved from various sources around the world. The restoration undertaken by Lowry Digital, based in Burbank, Calif., is still under way and won't be completed until September. The first phase, however, was released on Thursday and Lowry's rescue work has won rave reviews.
The Associated Press reported that "some of the details seem new because of their sharpness. Originally, astronaut Neil Armstrong's face visor was too fuzzy to be seen clearly. The upgraded video of Earth's first moonwalker shows the visor and a reflection in it."
It must be noted that anyone who saw Armstrong's moonwalk will remember the images weren't that clear to begin with. TV sets back then didn't offer the sharpest images--at least compared with the picture quality offered today. Moreover, the pictures were transmitted from the moon at 10 frames per second, with 320 lines of resolution for the live telecast.
With the original one-inch videotape recordings "degaussed, re-certified, and reused" NASA had to do some sleuthing to dig up copies. The best were narrowed down to four sources, including one from a handheld camera that was pointed at a monitor within Mission Control, according to a statement from the company.
One of the biggest hurdles for Lowry's technicians to overcome was that all four source materials were in different formats, frame rates, and resolutions.
That means blending different levels of brightness, contrast, and clarity.
Lowry's technology uses temporal image processing that collects information from clips and uses them to determine the correct contrast, resolution, and noise level in each frame, the company said.
The process uses imaging algorithms that have been "fine-tuned over the course of more than 400 major feature film restorations" including "Casablanca," Lowry said.
At NASA's request, some flaws will be kept in the restored version. Dust particles on the lens of the camera that taped Armstrong coming down the lunar module's ladder were visible in the original telecast. NASA officials think they too should be preserved.
The idea is not to enhance the record of the landing, but to re-create it.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
Have to admit that it is bit odd that this happens at a time in history when a) other moon visits are likely in the near future that would be compared to the original, and b) video analysis is becoming more advanced than ever before.
Now, any attempt to debunk the moon landing will face the additional task of proving that any given footage is actual footage or altered footage. Clever or coincidence?
LOL sure it was. Just admit we didn't land on the moon already.
I hope they fired the nerd who recorded the Merv Griffin show over the original tape...sheesh!
The actual film footage, both video and still, that came back was absolutely beautiful. Check out the enlargements at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. Breathtaking.
Let me enlighten you. Take, e.g., the Hubble telescope: resolution is 0.1 arcseconds. The moon is ~230,000 miles from earth... so, if the Hubble were to look at the moon, it's resolution would be ~600 feet!!! That is, each pixel is 600 feet. Now, imagine trying to image something as small as a lunar landing sight with 600ft resolution. A typical spy satellite has only slightly better resolution (~.05 arcseconds)... so ~300ft resolution.
Do us all a favor and educate yourself before spewing ignorant conspiracy BS.
The fact that you can see the worn path between the descent module and the science package is pretty cool.
hehhee.... im asking!
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We humans are not as advanced as we think!
I now don't see a Mars landing in our lives.
Seriously, I can imagine a 3 to 4 year preparation; but early talk from NASA is that it would take around 15 years. Why so long? Makes you suspect that perhaps some careful satellite launching / dumping was going on in the 60's / 70's with Russia keeping their mouths shut because they likely faked half of their accomplishments too ... I'm just saying ...
Besides, that wacky FOX tv special was borderline silly but there were some key points to ponder; including the images from "different" sites that had a few large stones remain in place from picture to picture ... pretty amazing coincidence. At one point NASA, the geniuses that they are, said they may have 'mistakenly labeled' the pictures; but if that's the case then how do they account for 95% of the non-large stones being moved or different? They say the angles and light cause shadows and tricks; oh well who knows.
Maybe the opposite it true and we've been secretly building a lunar base for the past 25 or 30 years.
"It must be noted that anyone who saw Armstrong's moonwalk will remember the images weren't that clear to begin with. TV sets back then didn't offer the sharpest images--at least compared with the picture quality offered today. Moreover, the pictures were transmitted from the moon at 10 frames per second, with 320 lines of resolution for the live telecast."
Also, I wanted to add that I have heard that NASA did not make a video feed available to the networks at the time of the Apollo 11 moon landing, which meant that the images that were broadcast were from video cameras capturing the output of a video monitor. This also certainly didn't enhance the clarity of these iconic images.
- by b_baggins July 20, 2009 6:21 PM PDT
- The conspiracy theory nuts always crack me up. I particularly love the footage where they double-speed the lunar rover video and say: Behold! The lunar rover looks like it's running over hills on earth! The shot is fake.
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (32 Comments)I reply: Look closer, and note the fine dust being kicked up in perfect parabolas with absolutely no hanging dust motes in the air. I guess the NASA hollywood crowd put the entire sound stage where the hoax was filmed in hard vacuum.