NASA has lost the original footage of man's first steps on the moon. Neil Armstrong's historic moment was seen by 600 million people in July 1969, but according to NASA the original tapes have been mislaid in their vast archive. They are now trying to track them down through paperwork dating back 35 years.
The television broadcast came from a camera that was pointed at a black and white monitor back on earth.
According to officials the footage could lay to rest the conspiracy theory that the landings were faked on a Hollywood sound stage.
Despite being the best record of the historic event, NASA simply filed the tapes away with other records.
A spokesman for the space agency said: "We're trying to track them down through the paperwork created at the time.
"But it's 35 years ago so it's a challenge."
This is a bit like the Louvre "Losing* the Mona Lisa!
"We think it is here somewhere! We just cant find it for now!"
I'm not entirely sure, although I think that the 'transmografication' (for want of a better word!) resulted in loss of resolution: i.e., the original process of transferring film or image data from the originals involved using a TV camera shooting a projection screen of some kind. It's an analog to analog conversion--messy and much more 'lossy' than some of the newer digital media formats available now. I think that broadcast television of the time simply did not have the resolution that the original tapes had. At least, this is my theory...
