News Missing Apollo 11 tapes found!

[Pyromaniac605]

Nvm.

Darren

 

[garyw]

I thought they were found several years ago? Do you have a link to the story?

 

[Pyromaniac605]

Nvm my dad told me they found it but he had misread, it was about them showing restored footage. :facepalm:

Darren

 

[orb]

SYDNEY (AFP) – Long-lost footage of Neil Armstrong descending the ladder of the Apollo 11 lunar module will be screened in public for the first time in Sydney next week, a prominent astronomer told AFP.

The footage runs for a few minutes and is considered to be some of the best footage of the historic 1969 moonwalk, but the film was lost in archives for many years and was badly damaged when found, said John Sarkissian.

It depicts the first few minutes of Armstrong's descent which was recorded in Australia as NASA was still scrambling for a signal, showing a far clearer image than was initially screened worldwide.

Telescopes in remote Australia played a key role in the Apollo 11 mission, including provision of the television signal, after Armstrong decided to attempt the moonwalk early, putting the United States just beyond the horizon.

Sarkissian -- historian and astronomer in charge of the Australian side of the recordings restoration project -- said the unseen minutes were the "best quality of Armstrong descending the ladder."

"NASA were using the Goldstone (California) station signal, which had its settings wrong, but in the signals being received by the Australian stations you can actually see Armstrong."

"In what people have seen before you can barely see Armstrong at all, you can see something black -- that was his leg."

The segment which runs for "just a few minutes" will be screened at the awards night of Australian Geographic magazine next Wednesday, at which Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin will be the chief guest.

"When we heard Buzz was going to be the guest of honour we thought 'what a great opportunity'," Sarkissian said.

The Armstrong footage, which has only previously been seen by Apollo veterans and other members of the astronomy community, would form part of a highlights reel of restored, digitised moonwalk footage at the awards, he added.

There was a "long detective story" involved in the search for the footage and Sarkissian said it took painstaking frame by frame work to shift the material from the deteriorating black and white film to digitial format.

"It was very damaged tape as well, that segment of Armstrong at the beginning," he said.

Digitising the recording was "significant in the space flight history context" allowing it to be preserved and copied for future generations, said Sarkissian.

- SOURCE -

 

[Notebook]

Happened last year here:

http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=8979&highlight=archive

N.

 

[Artlav]

That's the most important event of the century and they lost the tape?
No sense of priorities.

 

[Urwumpe]

That's the most important event of the century and they lost the tape?
No sense of priorities.

Why keep the original, if you have backups.

The problem was more finding the original received signal tapes of the first step, since all other existing tapes had been produced by filming the slow-scan TV signal from space from a screen with a normal TV camera, instead of using proper converters. With as you can expect, very low quality.

 

[FordPrefect]

I wonder how long it will be until the full HD footage of Apollo 15, 16 and 17 are found.

*Just dreaming*

 

[Urwumpe]

I wonder how long it will be until the full HD footage of Apollo 15, 16 and 17 are found.

*Just dreaming*

The 16mm film material isn't good enough for you?:lol:

 

[Moach]

its funny to think how today we have cellphones with better cameras than they used back then....

imagine if there was a moon landing today - we'd be watching it live in HD all the way


the mars event is gonna be SO awesome! tho i reckon we'll bbe watching it online, rather than on TV... TV is going downhill pretty wildly since the tube came along :hmm:

 

[Notebook]

I used to work in broadcast tv, and its capable of very good quality. Considering its age, standard definition tv will give good results, if its used within its limits. One of the biggest problems on video was noise, more than 2 generations of tape and results were pretty bad.
Digital went a long way to solve it, by that I mean the EBU 601 format:
http://www.ebu.ch/fr/technical/trev/trev_304-editorial.html

That was restricted to broadcasters, not the off-air transmission system.
I'm afraid the broadcasters lost the ball to the MPEG system, and at least in the UK the off-air pictures are pretty dire at times. Death by MPEG as its known...still not like me to complain, and most people can't see a problem even when you point it out.

16mm can give excellent results, needs someone who knows what they are doing at the camera and developing end, biggest problems we had was keeping it clean!

N.

 

[Pyromaniac605]

its funny to think how today we have cellphones with better cameras than they used back then....

imagine if there was a moon landing today - we'd be watching it live in HD all the way


the mars event is gonna be SO awesome! tho i reckon we'll bbe watching it online, rather than on TV... TV is going downhill pretty wildly since the tube came along :hmm:

And in 3D, HD isn't enough. :lol: And we all know the internet is a series of tubes.:thumbup:

Darren