A long lost footage of the best minutes of the moon landing (Neil Armstrong going down the ladder) has been found in Australian archives and will be released next week in Sidney. Wait, What ?! How do you lose footage of the Moon landing ? Just like that, according to Australian archivists.

The film was lost for decades and when found, was badly damaged, according to John Sarkissian, historian and astronomer in Sidney. He also said that this was the “best quality of Armstrong descending the ladder“.

“NASA were using the Goldstone (California) station signal, which had its settings wrong, but in the signals being received by the Australian stations you can actually see Armstrong. In what people have seen before you can barely see Armstrong at all, you can see something black — that was his leg.”

From the available information, the footage is just a few minutes long, and will be released next Wednesday, at the awards night of Australian Geographic magazine, where Buzz Aldrin, astronaut on Apollo 11 will be the guest of honor.

Enjoyed this article? Join 40,000+ subscribers to the ZME Science newsletter. Subscribe now!