posted 09-28-2010 10:43 AM               

The footage runs for a few minutes and is considered to be some of the best footage of the historic 1969 moonwalk, but the film was lost in archives for many years and was badly damaged when found, said John Sarkissian.

It depicts the first few minutes of Armstrong's descent which was recorded in Australia as NASA was still scrambling for a signal, showing a far clearer image than was initially screened worldwide...

Sarkissian -- historian and astronomer in charge of the Australian side of the recordings restoration project -- said the unseen minutes were the "best quality of Armstrong descending the ladder."

"NASA were using the Goldstone (California) station signal, which had its settings wrong, but in the signals being received by the Australian stations you can actually see Armstrong."

"In what people have seen before you can barely see Armstrong at all, you can see something black -- that was his leg."

The segment which runs for "just a few minutes" will be screened at the awards night of Australian Geographic magazine next Wednesday, at which Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin will be the chief guest.

posted 09-28-2010 09:18 PM               

News reports of some ‘long lost’ Apollo 11 footage surfacing in Australia sounded pretty intriguing, with articles about it appearing on several websites this morning. But surely, any of the long-searched-for-and-believed-lost footage finally showing up would have received a bigger fanfare than just a few articles. I checked with NASA Headquarters about this footage, and they told me it actually is the same video that NASA restored and released in 2009 for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.

These restored videos include 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., as well as 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 over 30 years.