'Lost' Footage of First Moonwalk to Screen in Australia

Tale of the TV Tapes: Apollo 11 Mission Archive Mystery Unspools

Slow-scan Polaroid taken at Goldstone tracking station reveals far more detail than publicly broadcast TV during Apollo 11 moonwalk. Search is underway to locate old Apollo tapes and freshen them up with new digital technologies. (Image credit: Image Courtesy: Bill Wood)

A screeningof long-lost tapes from the Apollo 11 mission ? including footage of NeilArmstrong's iconic descent from the lunar module to the surface of the moon ?will take place in Australia next week, according to news reports.

This will bethe first time the tapes are screened in public, the Agence France-Presse newsservice reported.

A set of tapesof the historic 1969 moonwalk was thought to have been either reusedyears ago ? erasing the original images in the process ? or lost somewhere inNASA's archives.

The restoredfootage runs for a few minutes and provides some of the best images of man's first steps on the moon, Australian astronomer John Sarkissian told AFP.

Sarkissian,who was a member of the restoration project, is an operations scientist at theCommonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization's Parkes RadioObservatory in Parkes, Australia.

He said thefootage, which was recorded in Australia, shows the first few minutes of Armstrong's descent.

NASA was relyingon the Goldstone, Calif., station signal, "which had its settings wrong,"Sarkissian told AFP, "but in the signals being received by the Australianstations you can actually see Armstrong.

"Inwhat people have seen before, you can barely see Armstrong at all. You can seesomething black ? that was his leg."

"Whenwe heard Buzz was going to be the guest of honor, we thought: What a greatopportunity," Sarkissian said.

Top 10 Apollo Hoax Theories
Gallery: Apollo 11 Flight in Pictures
Video: The Meaning of Apollo

Space.com is the premier source of space exploration, innovation and astronomy news, chronicling (and celebrating) humanity's ongoing expansion across the final frontier. Originally founded in 1999, Space.com is, and always has been, the passion of writers and editors who are space fans and also trained journalists. Our current news team consists of Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik; Editor Hanneke Weitering, Senior Space Writer Mike Wall; Senior Writer Meghan Bartels; Senior Writer Chelsea Gohd, Senior Writer Tereza Pultarova and Staff Writer Alexander Cox, focusing on e-commerce. Senior Producer Steve Spaleta oversees our space videos, with Diana Whitcroft as our Social Media Editor.