The U.S. space agency, NASA, has misplaced the original video recordings of the first landing by humans on the moon.
Those recordings were made July 20, 1969, as the Apollo 11 spacecraft transmitted images back to earth of astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon. Officials say the master tapes, piled in hundreds of boxes, were sent to the National Archives for a while. But they were returned to NASA sometime in the late 1970s.
Now, no one seems to know where they are. NASA has been searching for them for about a year-and-a-half, after some retired employees inquired about their whereabouts.
The space agency does have copies of the tapes. But their quality is far inferior to the originals.
NASA says it wants to find the originals and transfer the images to modern digital technology.
Among those original images is one seen by millions of people around the world. It shows astronaut Neil Armstrong becoming the first man to set foot on the moon.
When his foot touched the surface, he said, "That's one small step for man... one giant leap for mankind."
Also misplaced in the boxes are data about the health of the three Apollo 11 astronauts on their lunar mission and the condition of the spacecraft.
