Just in time for the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, NASA may have found the long-lostoriginal Apollo 11 videotapes.If true, as Britain's Sunday Express reports, the high-quality tapes may give us a whole new view of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's lunar strolls. Back on July 20, 1969, the raw video feed from themoon was beamed to the Parkes Observatory radio telescope in Australia, and then compressed andsent to Mission Control in Houston. Because of technical issues NASA's images couldn't be feddirectly to the TV networks. Instead, the grayish, blotchy images Americans saw on their TV setswere the result of a regular TV camera pointed at the huge wall monitor in Houston - a copy of acopy, in effect. Those images survive, and anyone can see them on YouTube. But the original,sharp, black-and-white tapes that were recorded at Parkes vanished. NASA had thought they'd been shipped to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., but asearch there a couple of years ago turned up nothing. Around the same time, though, tapescontaining data from moon-surface experiments was discovered in a university basement in Perth,Australia, on the other side of the country from Parkes. According to the Sunday Express, NASAhas combed through those tapes and found the original Apollo 11 video footage."We're talkingabout the same tapes", an unnamed NASA spokesman told the newspaper. FoxNews.com's requestsfor comments from NASA were not immediately returned. Thanks to the Sunday Express.
Mars Lake Picture: First Proof of Ancient Shores Found
The first-ever shoreline discovered on Mars would be a prime place to try and dig up proof of pastmicrobial life on the red planet, researchers have announced. The newfound shore (seen as it wouldhave looked filled with water in an artist's rendering) lies along what was once a body of water about the size of North America's Lake Champlain said the University of Colorado at Boulder teamthat spotted the feature. Although most ancient deltas on Mars have been badly eroded by winds, thenew lakeshores have been sheltered within a valley just north of the equator called ShalbatanaVallis. Planetary geologist and lead author Gaetano Di Achille said he and his colleagues firstspotted hints of the ancient lake in 2007 in sediment data from European Space Agency's InfraredImaging Surveyor. Now the scientists say they have "unambiguous evidence" of the well-maintained shoreline, thanks to high-resolution pictures of the region from NASA's MarsReconnaissance Orbiter. The now dry lake is thought to be just three billion years oldwhich
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would mean the region was watery 300 million years after Mars's warm, wet period is thought tohave ended, the team says. (Related: "NASA Images Add a Billion Years to Mars's Wet Period?")Despite the lake's scientific attractiveness, it might be a while before robotic probes can make thetrek. "It wouldn't be that easy to land in the lake," Di Achille said. But "in the future, it willdefinitely be one of the best places for looking at the presence of life." Findings appear online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Anne Minard
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Water on Mars?: There is evidence of waterborne sediments being carried down from high groundand deposited in low-lying alluvial fans. The discovery increases the chances of life existing on the planet in the recent past, or even surviving today. Scientists have identified fan-like gullies inside acrater that appear to be younger than 1.25 million years old. They believe the channels must have been sculpted by surface water from melting ice. There is evidence of waterborne sediments beingcarried down from high ground and deposited in low-lying alluvial fans. Professor James Head,
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