The Apollo 11 missing tapes are missing slow-scan television
(SSTV) recordings of the lunar transmissions broadcast during the Apollo 11
moonwalk, which was the first time human beings walked on the Moon. The tapes
carried SSTV and telemetry data recorded onto analog data recording tape. The
SSTV data was recorded as a backup against any failure of the live television
broadcasts. To allow broadcast of the SSTV transmission on standard television,
a real-time conversion from SSTV format was done. The converted video of the
moonwalk was broadcast live around the world on July 21, 1969. Many videotapes
and kinescopes were made of this broadcast as it happened, and these have never
been missing. Meanwhile, the missing tapes which carried recordings of the SSTV
signal as transmitted from the Moon, but before undergoing scan conversion, are
believed to have been erased and reused by NASA, along with many thousands of
other tapes. (NASA was faced with a shortage of quality data tapes in the early
1980s due to a change in the manufacturing process in the mid-1970s. This
caused tapes that were no longer needed to be reused.) If the original SSTV
format tapes were found, modern technology could be easily and cheaply used to
make a higher-quality conversion, yielding better images than those originally
seen. There are several still photographs, along with a few short segments of
super 8 movie film taken of a video monitor in Australia, which show the SSTV
transmission before it was converted.
On July
16, 2009 NASA held a newspapers briefing in which the agency issued rather
crisper-looking (and else cleaned-up), post-conversion video from the reside
announced of the Apollo 11 moonwalk, some of which had been in storage for
almost 40 years. They meantime had resolved that the reels of tape with the
SSTV pointer were transported from Australia to Goddard and then routinely
erased and reused a couple of years later. furthermore, a backup copy of the
tapes which had been made in Australia was furthermore erased after Goddard
obtained the reels. There is also documentation that two hours of the Apollo 11
moonwalk SSTV were noted in Australia on a distinct tape format but likewise,
these other tapes have not been found. The SSTV pointer had been noted on
telemetry facts and figures tapes mostly as a backup which could be held in
readiness and performed back later if the real-time conversion and announced
around the world failed. Since this real-time announced indeed worked and was
broadly recorded on both videotape and movie, the backup video was not regarded
significant at the time.
NASA stated that it did find some post-conversion exact replicates of the video that are of higher quality than has been seen by the public. These include videotape noted in Sydney after the alteration but before the satellite transmission around the world, videotape from CBS News archives (direct from NASA, without commentary), and kinescopes at Johnson Space Center. In 2009, NASA released some partially refurbished samples. The full restoration of the footage, about three hours long, was accomplished in December 2009. best features of this fully enhanced video were shown to the public for the first time at the Australian Geographic Society accolades on October 6, 2010, where Buzz Aldrin was the visitor of honor.
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