Relive the wonder of the first humans on the Moon now gloriously remastered.
35,000 original photos from NASA’s historic Apollo Moon missions are stored in a frozen vault under lock and key at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. For the first time in 50 years, these photos have been restored pixel by pixel, revealing these iconic images as we’ve never seen them before.
As we approach the first NASA mission to return to the Moon, with the goal of landing the first woman and person of color on the lunar surface, it’s not surprising that thoughts have turned to the first time humans visited our satellite. We can now explore the Moon in unprecedented detail thanks to the wizardry of photo restorer Andy Saunders.
Saunders, one of the world’s foremost experts on NASA digital restoration, has used cutting-edge techniques and skills to create the highest quality Apollo images ever produced, which are collected in a beautiful new book called Apollo Remastered. Now, we can experience spacewalks and Moon strolls as if we were there, as Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke attests:
“Andy Saunders’s remastered images are so clear and real that they are the next best thing to being there. . . They are an exact representation of what I remember from my journey to the Moon on Apollo 16. These photos reveal very precisely what the Moon was really like.”
Nothing makes you feel smaller than seeing the whole world in a visor.
Buzz Aldrin walked so that Perseverance, Curiosity, and Zhurong could run.
It wasn’t just flags that were left on the Moon, items ranged from golf balls to family photos.
“Leaving the photo of the family on the surface was an emotional moment,” says Duke in the book of the family portrait he left on the Moon in 1972.
When compared side by side, the restored detail is astonishing.
It seems incredible that in just a few short years we’ll be able to see what 50 years of technology might make of a scene like this. Are we set to get the first video of the surface of the Moon?
This December will mark 50 years since humans last walked on the Moon, and we have images like this to mark the occasion. In the coming decade, we can expect not only new spectacular photos from the Moon’s surface, but also the technical wizardry of people like Saunders on the ground, who make us feel as if we are there with them.
READ MORE: Breathtaking Image Shows Our Tiny Planet And Moon From Mars
Amazing, I remember watching this on tv when it happen. I am still in awe.