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Apollo 11 Video Restoration Press Conference / Newseum
Image by NASA Goddard Photo and Video
Scenes from the Apollo 11 television restoration press conference held at the Newseum in Washington, DC on July 16, 2009.
For video and still photo downloads:
svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010400/a010451/index.html
NASA Releases Restored Apollo 11 Moonwalk Video
WASHINGTON — NASA released Thursday newly restored video from the July 20, 1969, live television broadcast of the Apollo 11 moonwalk. The release commemorates the 40th anniversary of the first mission to land astronauts on the moon.
The initial video release, part of a larger Apollo 11 moonwalk restoration project, features 15 key moments from the historic lunar excursion of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
A team of Apollo-era engineers who helped produce the 1969 live broadcast of the moonwalk acquired the best of the broadcast-format video from a variety of sources for the restoration effort. These included a copy of a tape recorded at NASA’s Sydney, Australia, video switching center, where down-linked television from Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek was received for transmission to the U.S.; original broadcast tapes from the CBS News Archive recorded via direct microwave and landline feeds from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston; and kinescopes found in film vaults at Johnson that had not been viewed for 36 years.
"The restoration is ongoing and may produce even better video," said Richard Nafzger, an engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who oversaw television processing at the ground tracking sites during Apollo 11. "The restoration project is scheduled to be completed in September and will provide the public, future historians, and the National Archives with the highest quality video of this historic event."
NASA contracted with Lowry Digital of Burbank, Calif., which specializes in restoring aging Hollywood films and video, to take the highest quality video available from these recordings, select the best for digitization, and significantly enhance the video using the company’s proprietary software technology and other restoration techniques.
Under the initial effort, Lowry restored 15 scenes representing the most significant moments of the three and a half hours that Armstrong and Aldrin spent on the lunar surface. NASA released the video Thursday at a news conference at the Newseum in Washington.
On July 20, 1969, as Armstrong made the short step off the ladder of the Lunar Excursion Module onto the powdery lunar surface, a global community of hundreds of millions of people witnessed one of humankind’s most remarkable achievements live on television.
The black and white images of Armstrong and Aldrin bounding around the moon were provided by a single small video camera aboard the lunar module. The camera used a non-standard scan format that commercial television could not broadcast.
NASA used a scan converter to optically and electronically adapt these images to a standard U.S. broadcast TV signal. The tracking stations converted the signals and transmitted them using microwave links, Intelsat communications satellites, and AT&T analog landlines to Mission Control in Houston. By the time the images appeared on international television, they were substantially degraded.
At tracking stations in Australia and the United States, engineers recorded data beamed to Earth from the lunar module onto one-inch telemetry tapes. The tapes were recorded as a backup if the live transmission failed or if the Apollo Project needed the data later. Each tape contained 14 tracks of data, including bio-medical, voice, and other information; one channel was reserved for video.
A three-year search for these original telemetry tapes was unsuccessful. A final report on the investigation is expected to be completed in the near future and will be publicly released at that time.
Sunset with the Stacks
Image by satosphere
The entire day had been dreary. Fog, clouds and a lashing rain made it unsuitable for everything but the rainforest and the waterfalls in Olympic. And I was nowhere near either. Instead, I was dreading to walk on a very slippery boardwalk, albeit just for 3 miles, to the coastal beauty that was Cape Alava
Thankfully, rains had spared this location (even though it was pouring just an hour ago on the drive there). But the clouds were still there and the sun made many valiant attempts to peer through the layer of white water vapor.
Finally, in the evening, it did. The break in the clouds provided for some fantastic dynamic lighting as beams of the warm evening sunlight streamed through to the wide open ocean beyond the stacks. Deep dark silhouettes from the tall ocean stacks formed the foreground of this impressive scene.
Walking along the lonely beach, I was listening to the constant pitter-pattering of tiny flies feeding on the drying kelp brought out by the last high tide, while swifts fluttered all around me to catch the stragglers that tried to jump off my path. A high-pitched screech grabbed my attention to the graceful flight of the bald eagle that was trying to fish in the cold ocean waters while cormorants and sea gulls roosted on the sea stacks interspersed in the ocean.
Its hard not to get immersed in this scene and realize that we are nothing more than a tiny speck in the giant machine of nature, a flick in an eternity of time.
I hope my flick is a worthy one.
Shot using my telephoto lens – the soft sand prevented any good usage of the tripod I had carried. So I opened up as much as I reasonably could and used a faster shutter speed
Olympic National Park
WA USA