Editing Moon landing conspiracy theories (section)

==== Tapes ====
{{Main|Apollo 11 missing tapes}}

[[File:Apollo11C.jpg|thumb|right|Photo of the high-quality SSTV image before the scan conversion]]
[[File:Apollo11D.jpg|thumb|right|Photo of the degraded image after the SSTV scan conversion]]

Dr. David R. Williams (NASA archivist at [[Goddard Space Flight Center]]) and Apollo 11 flight director [[Gene Kranz|Eugene F. Kranz]] both acknowledged that the original high-quality Apollo 11 telemetry data tapes are missing. Conspiracists see this as evidence that they never existed.<ref name="didwego" /> The Apollo 11 telemetry tapes were different from the telemetry tapes of the other Moon landings because they contained the raw television broadcast. For technical reasons, the Apollo 11 lander carried a [[slow-scan television]] (SSTV) camera (see [[Apollo TV camera]]). To broadcast the pictures to regular television, a scan conversion had to be done. The [[radio telescope]] at Parkes Observatory in Australia was able to receive the telemetry from the Moon at the time of the Apollo 11 moonwalk.<ref name="eagleswings2">{{cite journal |last=Sarkissian |first=John M. |title=On Eagle's Wings: The Parkes Observatory's Support of the Apollo 11 Mission |year=2001 |journal=Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia |volume=18 |issue=3 |pages=287–310 |location=Collingwood, Victoria |publisher=[[CSIRO Publishing]] for the [[Astronomical Society of Australia]] |doi=10.1071/AS01038 |access-date=November 25, 2008 |url=http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/apollo11/|bibcode = 2001PASA...18..287S |doi-access=free }} October 2000 website version, part 1 of 12: "Introduction." Original version available from [http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/apollo11/pasa/on_eagles_wings.pdf CSIRO Parkes Observatory] (PDF).</ref> Parkes had a bigger antenna than NASA's antenna in Australia at the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, so it received a better picture. It also received a better picture than NASA's antenna at [[Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex]]. This direct TV signal, along with telemetry data, was recorded onto one-inch fourteen-track analog tape at Parkes. The original SSTV transmission had better detail and contrast than the scan-converted pictures, and it is this original tape that is missing.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/apollo11/Parkes_Apollo11_TV_quality.html |title=The Parkes Apollo 11 TV Quality |last=Sarkissian |first=John M. |publisher=[[Parkes Observatory|CSIRO Parkes Observatory]] |access-date=November 25, 2008}}</ref> A crude, real-time scan conversion of the SSTV signal was done in Australia before it was broadcast worldwide. However, still photos of the original SSTV image are available (see photos). About fifteen minutes of it were filmed by an amateur [[8 mm film]] camera and these are also available. Later Apollo missions did not use SSTV. At least some of the telemetry tapes still exist from the [[Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package|ALSEP]] scientific experiments left on the Moon (which ran until 1977), according to Dr. Williams. Copies of those tapes have been found.<ref name="Amalfi">{{cite news |title=Lost Moon landing tapes discovered |last=Amalfi |first=Carmelo |url=http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/lost-moon-landing-tapes-discovered/ |work=Cosmos Online |publisher=Cosmos Media Pty Ltd |location=Australia |date=November 1, 2006 |access-date=November 25, 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130214030100/http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/lost-moon-landing-tapes-discovered/ |archive-date=February 14, 2013}}</ref>

Others are looking for the missing telemetry tapes for different reasons. The tapes contain the original and highest quality video feed from the Apollo 11 landing. Some former Apollo personnel want to find the tapes for posterity, while NASA engineers looking towards future Moon missions believe that the tapes may be useful for their design studies. They have found that the Apollo 11 tapes were sent for storage at the U.S. National Archives in 1970, but by 1984, all the Apollo 11 tapes had been returned to the Goddard Space Flight Center at their request. The tapes are believed to have been stored rather than re-used.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/Apollo_11/tapes/Search_for_SSTV_Tapes.pdf |title=The Search for the Apollo 11 SSTV Tapes |last=Sarkissian |first=John M. |date=May 21, 2006 |website=Honeysucklecreek.net |publisher=CSIRO Parkes Observatory |access-date=April 26, 2013}}</ref> Goddard was storing 35,000 new tapes per year in 1967,<ref>{{cite web| url=https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19670010532_1967010532.pdf| access-date=September 5, 2009| title=The GSFC Scientific Data Storage Problem| publisher=NASA}}</ref> even before the Moon landings.

In November 2006, [[Cosmos (magazine)|COSMOS Online]] reported that about 100 data tapes recorded in Australia during the Apollo 11 mission had been found in a small marine science laboratory in the main physics building at the [[Curtin University of Technology]] in [[Perth, Western Australia|Perth, Australia]]. One of the old tapes has been sent to NASA for analysis. The slow-scan television images were not on the tape.<ref name="Amalfi" />

In July 2009, NASA indicated that it must have erased the original Apollo 11 Moon footage years ago so that it could re-use the tape. In December 2009, NASA issued a final report on the Apollo 11 telemetry tapes.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/Apollo_11_TV_Tapes_Report.pdf |title=The Apollo 11 Telemetry Data Recordings: A Final Report |date=December 2009 |publisher=NASA |access-date=April 27, 2013}}</ref> Senior engineer Dick Nafzger was in charge of the live TV recordings during the Apollo missions, and he was put in charge of the restoration project. After a three-year search, the "inescapable conclusion" was that about 45 tapes (estimated 15 tapes recorded at each of the three tracking stations) of Apollo 11 video were erased and re-used, said Nafzger.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2009/07/17/nasa-lost-moon-footage-but-hollywood-restores-it |title=NASA lost moon footage, but Hollywood restores it |date=July 17, 2009 |first=Seth |last=Borenstein |agency=Associated Press |newspaper=[[U.S. News & World Report]] |access-date=September 5, 2009}}</ref> [[Lowry Digital]] had been tasked with restoring the surviving footage in time for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. Lowry Digital president Mike Inchalik said that "this is by far and away the lowest quality" video that the company has dealt with. Nafzger praised Lowry for restoring "crispness" to the Apollo video, which will remain in black and white and contains conservative digital enhancements. The US$230,000 restoration project took months to complete and did not include sound quality improvements. Some selections of restored footage in high definition have been made available on the NASA website.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/hd/apollo11.html |title=Apollo 11 Partial Restoration HD Video Streams |date=August 7, 2009 |editor-last=Garner |editor-first=Robert |publisher=NASA |access-date=September 5, 2009 |archive-date=September 3, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090903224337/http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/hd/apollo11.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>