Remembering Apollo 11: July 20, 1969

By Nancy Atkinson - July 20, 2011 at 6:39 PM UTC | Space Exploration

Those of a certain age can remember watching the footage of the Apollo 11 moonwalk live on television: the view was grainy, shadowy, and dark but it was

from the Moon,

which trumped everything else. Two years ago for the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, NASA digitized and re-mastered the original footage, cleaning it up significantly. Here's a brief montage from all the film that was cleaned up, put together by the

Bad Astronomer.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com