Just found out the moon landing footage wasn't lost, it was taped over by NASA in the 80s

I was digging through some old declassified reports from a FOIA request and stumbled on a memo from 1986 admitting they recycled the Apollo 11 master tapes for satellite data. Has anyone else seen this document or is my source just full of it?

3 comments

3 Comments

chen.jade2mo ago

Oh man, that's a really common misconception but the tapes you're talking about were actually the backup copies, not the original Apollo 11 master tapes. The original data was recorded on different reels that stayed at the Goddard Space Flight Center. The ones that got taped over were just a separate set of tracking tapes that had already been archived elsewhere.

skylerp202mo ago

backup copies" - yeah that's exactly the kind of detail I'd get wrong. I'm the guy who'd tape over his own wedding video trying to record a football game. Seriously though, I appreciate you clearing that up. Every time I hear that story I imagine some poor intern hitting record on the wrong deck and accidentally wiping out a piece of history. Good to know it wasn't that dramatic and the real data was safe the whole time. At least now I can sleep better knowing we didn't lose the moon landing to a rerun of Gilligan's Island.

the_reese28d ago

Right? It's like finding out the backup VHS of your grandma's 80th birthday party got recorded over with a 3am infomercial but the original tape is still sitting in a drawer somewhere. I still love the mental image of some NASA tech in 1969 just shrugging and hitting record on the wrong machine because he wanted to watch the big game. "Sorry Neil, but the Cowboys are playing and I need this reel." Glad the conspiracy theorists are wrong though, would've been a rough headline.