http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/2602180/NASA-admits-moon-landings-taped-over/
I can't believe why they wouldn't keep them. Live television was one thing but it's a historical event. Granted - like the destruction of Doctor Who episodes in the years that followed the moon landings - they didn't see a future market for the tapes. But still...
The original recordings of the first humans landing on the moon 40 years ago were erased and taped over - NASA has admitted.
But, the space agency says, newly restored copies of the original broadcast look even better.
NASA released the first glimpses of a complete digital make-over of the original landing footage that clarifies the blurry and grainy images of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the surface of the moon.
The full set of recordings, being cleaned up by Burbank, California-based Lowry Digital, will be released in September.
NASA admitted in 2006 that no one could find the original video recordings of the July 20, 1969, landing.
Since then, Richard Nafzger, an engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, who oversaw television processing at the ground-tracking sites during the Apollo 11 mission, has been looking for them.
The good news is he found where they went. The bad news is they were part of a batch of 200,000 tapes that were degaussed - magnetically erased - and re-used to save money.
"The goal was live TV," Nafzger told a news conference.
"We should have had a historian running around saying 'I don't care if you are ever going to use them - we are going to keep them'," he said.
I can't believe why they wouldn't keep them. Live television was one thing but it's a historical event. Granted - like the destruction of Doctor Who episodes in the years that followed the moon landings - they didn't see a future market for the tapes. But still...
