Article updated, please see updates below
When NASA put a man on the moon it was a triumph of achievement for the US as it showed its technical capabilities and its dedication to space exploration. NASA spent years planning for and developing specialized equipment for the mission. One such piece of equipment was a high resolution video camera that would send back images to Earth.
Because of the lack of technology at the time the video feed from the moon actually had to be compressed and scaled down to work on televisions across the world. After the initial recording of the high resolution stream from the moon the film went missing after its shipment back to the US. The only surviving record was a 16mm film that was shot at a black and white TV which gives us the only surviving recorded copy until today.
In Perth, Australia scientists were looking in old storage rooms for other data when they stumbled upon tapes from NASA which they thought would be information regarding moon dust from several later missions to the moon. To their surprise it was the long lost high resolution film from the first moon walk.
NASA has not publicly mentioned that the films have been found yet but they are expected to announce that the footage was found around the time of the 40th anniversary of the first moon walk which is on July 20th.
Until the high quality version is made available, here's a version from YouTube:
Updated: It appears as this may be a hoax as the original source is saying "NASA Deputy Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs, the Sunday Express article I link to below "is a fiction". Sounds to me like I got duped, and I apologize to everyone for forwarding this story. Hopefully more info will come out soon, and I'll update as I hear it." Unfortunately it looks like we must live with the grainy video for another 40 years.
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