The search for the Apollo 11 TV tapes

Surprisingly, the best quality TV was never seen outside the tracking stations. The pictures seen by the world were degraded by the time they reached Houston.

The highest quality TV was recorded on telemetry tapes at the three tracking stations which received the signal – Goldstone, Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes. These tapes have never been replayed, but if they can be found and digitally processed, they could produce stunningly clear TV – much better than was seen in Houston or on the worldwide broadcast.

The original tapes may be stored – and forgotten about – at a NASA facility somewhere.

Read about the search (supported by those who worked at Goldstone, Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek) – and also see all the known photos taken at the tracking stations – by following the links in this section.

Apollo 11 Tape Search Alert – This is the best place to start

Download this 3 page document about the tape search A summary document that can be easily printed out or e-mailed to explain the search – to help find anyone who worked with the tapes. Includes contact details on page 3. Click the image to download the 1.6MB PDF file. Released 20 July 2006. (See here for acknowlegements.)

These are some of the tapes we seek –

The tapes we would really like to find are 14" diameter, 1" wide telemetry tapes – not standard TV tapes. In fact, the tapes below are some of the tapes.

John Vanderkly anotates the tapes on an M-22 telemetry recorder running at 120 inches per second – at Honeysuckle Creek, towards the end of the Apollo 11 EVA. Recording at this speed, the tapes had to be changed every 15 minutes. Click the image to open the 512kb MPEG4 video file in another window. Length: 6 seconds (From the Super 8 movie film shot by Ed von Renouard.)

Images mentioned in the above PDF files

The Accession 255-69A-4099 document from the National Records Center. Click the image for a larger version.	An Apollo 9 Canary Island Tracking Station tape label – from one of the few magnetic tapes at the National Archives not recalled by Goddard. Click the image for a larger version.

Other resources on this website –

For further reading

A comprehensive 22 page report from John Sarkissian at the Parkes Radio Telescope – current as of 21st May 2006. Click the image to download the 2MB PDF file. (Also available here on the Parkes website.)

Tracking-station-TV compared with what the world saw

Click the image to download this 4.2MB PDF file comparing still photos of the pictures on the TV monitors at Goldstone, Honeysuckle Creek, and Parkes. (This was put together as a presentation – hence the format – to demonstrate the differences in quality between what was seen at the tracking stations and what was recorded at Houston.) See the entire set of Honeysuckle stills here.

Still photos	Super 8 movies
See Ed von Renouard’s photos of the TV monitors at Honeysuckle Creek. These photos were taken during the EVA and immediately afterwards from tape replays.	Click the above image to see some of Ed von Renouard’s unique Super 8 movie of the start of the TV – as seen at Honeysuckle Creek.

and see the new DVD of Apollo 11 TV footage as recorded at Honeysuckle (footage rediscovered in 2005).
– This is currently the best quality recording of parts of the Apollo 11 Moonwalk that we have.
(These DVDs also contain Super 8 footage shot during Apollos 16 and 17 and Skylab II.)

and also the main Apollo 11 TV section.