There is a “World Exclusive” report in the Sunday Express which suggests that NASA recently discovered the original telemetry data tapes from the Apollo-11 mission, which contain the raw television images before scan conversion.

ECSTATIC space officials at Nasa could be about to unveil one of their most stunning discoveries for 40 years — new and amazingly clear footage of the first moon landing.

The release of the new images next month could be one of the most talked about events of the summer.

The television images the world has been used to seeing of the historic moment when Neil Armstrong descended down a ladder onto the moon’s surface in 1969 is grainy, blurry and dark.

The following scenes, in which the astronauts move around the lunar lander, are so murky it is difficult to make out exactly what is going on, causing conspiracy theorists to claim the entire Apollo 11 mission was an elaborate fraud.

However, viewers have only ever seen such poor quality footage because the original analogue tapes containing the pictures beamed direct from the lunar surface were lost almost as soon as they were recorded.

Instead, a poor quality copy made from a 16mm camera pointing at a heavily compressed image on a black and white TV screen has been the only record of the event.

The Sunday Express can now reveal that the missing tapes containing the original high quality images have been found.

If the visual data can be retrieved, Nasa is set to reveal them to the world as a key plank of celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of the landings next month.

The tapes show in much more detail than almost anyone has previously seen the surface of the moon beneath the patriotic symbol of the US flag.

Crucially, they could once and for all dispel 40 years of wild conspiracy theories.

The low grade, dark and grainy television pictures that were beamed around the world on July 21 1969 were intended to give Americans just a glimpse of their country’s greatest exploratory achievement.

If this is true, it could be great news as the pictures would be far superior to the existing video that was recorder post scan-conversion.   The original transmission was converted from 10fps to the NTSC frame rate of 30fps (or more accurately 29.97 fps) using a relatively simple and lossy scan converter.  Today, however, it is possible to convert the frame rate from 10fps to a higher rate using digital algorithms that can track motion and result in a final video that is very close to a naively recorded 30fps video, especially in circumstances where there is not very much fast motion.   It should also be possible to scale the video without as much loss of quality using modern algorithms.   Finally, the noise and degradation which is common to retransmitted analog video will not be present.

The final result therefore may be very close to standard definition television broadcasts, with improved detail and clarity.  It will still, however, be in black and white.

More details on the system for conversion and retransmission can be found on this previous post.

The article is a little inaccurate about the current archive recording, however, when it states that “a poor quality copy made from a 16mm camera pointing at a heavily compressed image on a black and white TV screen has been the only record of the event.”   This is not the case.  In fact, the copy was made using a kinescope system, which does record television pictures onto film, but is a bit less crude than just pointing a camera at a TV screen.  Instead, it synchronizes the film with the video and uses a special high-contrast rendering tube and optics designed for this purpose.   The kinescope was used for the final recording because,  at the time, it was considered superior to available video tape systems.

I’m a little skeptical of the report, however:

I would not be so quick to assume that this is definitely an accurate report of the tapes being found.  I very much hope that is the case, but there is another possibility.   In recent months, I’ve been doing some work myself on cleaning up the existing Apollo-11 footage and I have had some contact with individuals who have been working with NASA archive material and other third-party recordings.

I have received some information about efforts to improve images from a second-generation video tape of the landing which was made after scan conversion.  This video is NOT the raw transmission video and should not be confused with the original telemetry tapes.  It is a recording of the post-scan conversion video.  Compared to the archive kinescope recordings, the video is not necessarily any better in quality.  It does, however, record a portion of the broadcast from a different reception station than the archive copy.  There are efforts to try to pull better images off the tapes.   These portions may end up providing additional video data of supperior contrast and brightness to the existing archive copy.

(note the use of the word “may.”   The efforts to extract better video from existing recordings might be fruitful or they might not)

I can’t really say anything speffic about the time recorded or the exact quality that is expected.   This may or may not even pan out in the end.   If it offers some better video, it still won’t be anywhere near what could be read off of original telemetry tapes.

I’m only revealing this to make it clear that there is an alternate explanation for the report.  It is possible that the “new video tape” is not the actual telemetry tapes.  This could be a misunderstanding of another tape which is being worked on.

(Sorry if I am being vague about the recording that does exist.)

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 28th, 2009 at 6:09 pm and is filed under Announcements, Good Science, History, Misc, Space. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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