Some Apollo 11 Images Erased
PHILLIPS: It's the best video you've never seen from the Apollo 11 moon landing. So, where on Earth is it? NASA has no idea. The story from CNN's Tom Foreman.</s>NEIL ARMSTRONG, ASTRONAUT: That's one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.</s>TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's the iconic image of our efforts to explore space. And now, as we approach the 40th anniversary of man's first visit to the moon, NASA has restored and enhanced the original grainy black and white images, including that one that riveted the planet.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Boy, that looks beautiful.</s>FOREMAN: Astronaut Neil Armstrong, setting foot on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. The new high-definition video is an improvement over the original. But NASA officials believe that somewhere out there is video that could take our breath away, images like this but sharper and clearer than anything seen before. The problem is, no one knows where it is.</s>ANNOUNCER: And liftoff of Endeavour.</s>FOREMAN: Regular shuttle images and the crisp color images they transmit have space fans a little spoiled. We forget just how complicated it was to transmit pictures from space to earth in 1969. Here's how it worked. A small camera built into Apollo 11 scanned the lunar landing in a unique format unsuitable for regular tv. Those images were transmitted to tracking stations in southeast Australia and California's Mohave Desert, where they were converted to a standard format and sent on to Houston, losing picture quality every step of the way. But veterans of the Apollo mission recently reminded NASA that technicians at both ground stations recorded the transmissions on to special tapes, which if converted now with modern technology would produce the highest quality images of man on the moon ever seen. A search has been launched, but three years into it, after scouring multiple NASA facilities, there's no sign of those tapes. And now, many fear the spectacular images on them, images far superior to anything we have ever seen, may be lost forever. Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.</s>PHILLIPS: Well, NASA's just revealed the results of an investigation into those missing tapes. It seemed that they were degoused (ph), and yes, that means erased right here on Earth. I know it's not the same, but you can get a new view of the lunar landing on Twitter. Check out twitter.com/apolloplus40. They are sweeting tweeting the mission as it happened, right through Monday's big anniversary. And we're waiting to hear from federal prosecutors any minute now on a reported arrest in the Steve McNair case. We're expecting a news conference. Live pictures from that venue. We're going to take you back there as soon as it starts. And as you recall, the former NFL star was shot to death on July 4th by his mistress, who then killed herself. Now law-enforcement sources tell the Associated Press they've arrested the man who provided the gun to her. He's identified as Adrian Gilliam, a convicted murder. We'll keep an eye on this for you.