NASA has admitted that the only high-quality video recordings of the first Moon landing in 1969 were likely erased and reused to store satellite data. The admission comes after a four-year search for 45 missing tapes from the Apollo 11 mission, which ultimately concluded that the tapes are no longer in existence.
Dick Nafzger, one of the last Apollo-era video engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, stated: 'The inescapable conclusion is that the recordings are no longer.' He added that he does not believe anyone at NASA acted improperly, but that the tapes 'slipped through the cracks.'
The original slow-scan television data, transmitted from the Moon to a radio telescope in Australia, could have produced much sharper images than the grainy footage broadcast to the world. However, hundreds of thousands of magnetic tapes were recycled in the 1970s and 1980s to record data from an increasing number of satellites.
Stan Lebar, designer of the lunar camera used by Neil Armstrong, noted: 'These satellites were suddenly using tapes seven days a week, 24 hours a day... there was just an overwhelming amount of evidence that led us to believe that they just don’t exist anymore.'
As a consolation, NASA has digitally remastered the existing television video copies into broadcast-quality footage, which shows more detail of Armstrong's descent and activities on the lunar surface. Nafzger described the restored footage as 'excellent' and 'very clean,' emphasising that nothing has been altered or created.
