Alternate Camera View of Apollo 11 Moon Walk

Alternate Camera View of Apollo 11 Moon Walk

At 02:56 UTC on July 21 (10:56pm EDT, July 20), 1969, Astronaut Neil Armstrong began his descent to the moon's surface, and spoke his now famous line: "One small step for man, one giant leap for all mankind." We've all seen the video:

Recently, the video from the special 16 mm Data Acquisition Camera mounted in the lunar module has been widely available. The camera could be set to normal speed, or to one frame per second, to save film. For the moon walk, the camera was set to normal speed.

This video offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes view of the set-up before the historic video. For one thing, you hear Armstrong discussing the proper set-up. You hear him announce that he's opening the Modular Equipment Storage Assembly, where the camera that was used for the "public" footage was stored (so much for the wags who insist that the moon walk was fake because it wasn't possible for Armstrong to take footage of his own footstep). You can see Armstrong making a test hop, and checking the dust of the lunar soil with a boot. You can find the alternate camera footage here, but what's really really cool is that the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal has a QuickTime clip with both the MESA and DAC cameras footage synchronized.

I can remember seeing the network footage, live, of the moon walk on my parents tiny 12'' black and white TV, the day before my seventh birthday.

And it's still awesome.