Quote:DIGITALLY REMASTERED VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS of the three-hour 1969 moonwalk have been revealed for the first time to a public audience. They include a clearer picture of Neil Armstrong's descent down the stairs of the lunar module, which was taken from the Parkes Radio Observatory and the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station outside Canberra on 21 July 1969 (Australian time).

The long-forgotten video footage was uncovered during a decade-long search for the original recordings of the moonwalk, and involved lengthy detective work and clandestine meetings, says astronomer and telescope operator John Sarkissian from the CSIRO at Parkes, who headed up the search. "We found lots of videos and things all over the place and we compiled them into a single seamless video of the whole moonwalk", John told Australian Geographic.

This was then restored to clean up the degradation of the videos experienced over the past 40 years, he adds. Though NASA released some clips last year, the full video has only been seen by a few veteran astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin.

The digitally enhanced footage includes Neil Armstrong's first step on the Moon's surface, Buzz Aldrin's decent of the lunar module ladder, the plaque reading and the raising of the US flag. The restoration took months of painstaking work as the videos had to be cleaned frame-by-frame.

Read the full story about the discovery and restoration of the footage here. The footage was shown tonight at the Australian Geographic Society Awards dinner in Sydney. Dr Buzz Aldrin was the guest of honour and received the the AG Society Honorary Lifetime of Adventure award at the event.