It transpires that NASA seems to have erased the original tape of Moon Landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
Story:
A dramatic recording of the first manned landing on the Moon has been rediscovered at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.
The tape covers the crucial few minutes as the Apollo 11 lander touches down on the surface of the Earth’s satellite in July 1969.
The recording is of the flight director, Gene Kranz, and his “white team” of mission controllers. Each member of the team was responsible for one aspect of the landing, such as fuel, altitude, orientation, crew health, etc.
The rescued recording of the perilous descent combines the flight director/controller loop with the astronaut loop. It also covers the decision about whether the astronauts should remain on the Moon following the landing – or immediately lift off.
‘Bad tape’The impetus to locate the tape came from Kipp Teague, who runs an online resource of data on the Apollo Moon landings.
It was found in the audio library at Nasa’s space centre in Houston. The recording had been labelled “bad tape” because it was in a very poor condition.
Initially, it could not be played, being so poorly tensioned on its spool. It was also starting to disintegrate, shedding metal oxide particles from its recording surface.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1552367.stm
A few years back, NASA released a digital makeover of the moon landing footage, clearing up the poor quality of the imagery. The footage includes Neil and Buzz walking on the moon. Though these updated recordings have been out for a few years now, back in 2006 NASA revealed they had recorded over the original video of the landing.
The tapes were part of 20,000 tapes that were magnetically erased and re-used to save money. Wiping and reusing tapes, or even outright destroying footage, was pretty standard practice several decades ago. Doctor Who, for example, which has recently become very popular on the internet, is missing numerous episodes from the 60’s and 70’s for the same reason.”
