apollo remastered tour

Apollo Remastered: how 35,000 NASA photos were breathtakingly restored

Andy Saunders, restorer of NASA's most iconic Apollo footage including Neil Armstrong's moonwalk, has just released new book

Imagine if you could go back in time and recreate high-resolution images from some of humanity's most iconic moments. And imagine if those were moments you'd been passionate about since you were a small child, gazing on with fascination as the events unfolded.

That's exactly what image restoration expert and Apollo obsessive Andy Saunders has been doing for the last few years, as he works through a back-catalog of thousands of stills and footage from the NASA Apollo missions to create stunningly clear and colorful reproductions.

Taking newly available digital scans and applying painstaking care and cutting-edge enhancement techniques, Andy has created the highest quality Apollo photographs ever produced, including exclusive spacewalks and crystal-clear portraits of astronauts, and genuinely breathtaking new visions of the Earth and the Moon, which offer reflection and insight into one of humankind's greatest endeavors.

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To coincide with with the 50th anniversary of the last steps taken on the Moon, Andy's lovingly restored NASA photographs feature in a new book called Apollo Remastered . Lucky enough to get my hands on a physical copy of the book, I discovered just how much thought has gone into the design and production.

Apollo Remastered includes panoramic shots that have been seamlessly stitched together and presented across two pages, while pull-outs are included throughout to help you visualize the lunar landscape. The Apollo missions from 7 to 17 are covered chronologically, but technical photographers should also enjoy the chapters covering the history of space photography, the development of specialist photographic equipment and details on the scanning and digital processing techniques that Andy used to remaster the images (more below).

Space (a vast and unimaginably large subject to talk about with just one word) seems to having a bit of a renaissance. In July, NASA released its first images from the James Webb Space telescope and showed us the deepest, most beautiful views of the universe we've ever seen.

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 • These are the best film scanners

For the launch of Apollo Remastered , I spoke to Andy Saunders to find out more about this landmark film to digital project. From the first views of the curvature of Earth, to setting foot on the Moon, and the last steps on the Moon during Apollo 17, Apollo Remastered is truly out of this world.

British-based Andy Saunders is an author, science writer, and an expert when it comes to digital photo restoration. His photographic work has appeared internationally, and regularly features in the headlines from the likes of BBC news and the New York Times. Andy's career began in management consultancy, but he found a way to combine his passion for photography and the Apollo missions, and began restoring old film footage depicting NASA's human space exploration. His latest book, Apollo Remastered has just been published by Penguin, and offers more than 450 pages of awe-inspiring imagery from the NASA archive.

Hi Andy. Could you tell us how the idea for Apollo Remastered came about?

It was really born out of a desire to see a photograph of one of the most important moments in history – Neil Armstrong on the Moon – and the frustration that this effectively did not exist (Armstrong held the one and only camera). I decided to try and apply a complex digital processing technique, including image stacking, to multiple frames of the 16mm ‘movie’ footage to effectively create the image that was missing from the history books. As I started to process it, I simply could not believe the level of detail I was able to reveal. I could see fine detail even down to his eyelid, through his helmet – and it was recognizably Armstrong. As I was processing it, and the image became clearer, I almost felt like an archeologist brushing the dust off some long forgotten artefact. I was hooked!

I released it for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. It was front page news and is regarded as the only clear, recognizable image of Neil Armstrong on the Moon.

I then properly assessed the whole back-catalog of Apollo imagery and found that it was inconsistent, and universally of a quality not befitting the technical capability of the original photographic equipment and film, nor the film’s historically significant content. This is mostly due to the fact that everything we’ve ever seen from Apollo has been based on duplicate film. Or copies of copies of copies of the ‘dupes’. 

Having developed the techniques and now having the Holy Grail available (the original flight film, no more duplicates) for the first time in almost half a century, I made the decision that I simply had to undertake this project. NASA wasn’t doing it and nobody else was, so I put my career and business commitments on hold indefinitely and started working through the 35,000 stills and every frame of the 10 hours of ‘movie’ footage.

What's your background in photography?

I’ve had a lifelong passion for photography ever since I was wowed by seeing a polaroid being taken in a neighbor’s garden back in the late 70’s. I was always one for making collections and albums and remember the desperate disappointment when collecting my films from the developers and finding they didn’t turn out well. Back then I thought those moments were effectively lost forever, but now, with digital processing we can recover so many images that would otherwise end up on the cutting room floor - even from old film.

I have always enjoyed taking photographs too. I guess I was somewhere between a serious amateur and a semi-professional for a time, but since then I’ve switched my focus to remastering film.

Have you always been interested in the Apollo missions?

Oh I’ve had a bit of an obsession with the Apollo Missions and with the Moon since childhood. As with many little boys, I thought rockets were pretty exciting things and the Moon itself had it’s own particular draw for me – it seemed like the ultimate destination and when I learnt people had actually been there I just had to know everything about it. Who were these people? How did they do it? What did the rocket look like? What did the spacecraft look like? What was it like to walk on the Moon!?

As I’ve got older that child-like fascination has never really left me but now it’s more a growing appreciation for just how amazing an achievement this was – especially the further back in time these events go – now over 50 years!

How did you turn the film reels into digital images?

The RAW output from the digital scan of a 70mm Hasselblad frame, is a huge 1.3GB, 16-bit TIFF file, 11,000 pixels square, but they’re still essentially a digital photograph of a piece of analog film. So although they contain an incredible amount of information, they require a significant amount of careful processing to tease out the detail and produce a well balanced image.

The transparencies were developed for an analog world, not for digital scanning – and the raw scans typically show an apparently significantly underexposed image. Boosting the levels however, brings out a whole host of unwanted artefacts and large areas of lower contrast, for example. Several techniques are applied to subdue these unwanted artifacts and create a balanced frame. Some of the key processing techniques subsequently applied include local level and contrast adjustments, noise reduction, and digital removal of contaminants that were not removed during film cleaning, prior to the scan.

I want the reader to feel like this is as close as they can get to stepping on the Moon themselves. I want them to see exactly what the astronauts saw. Presenting an accurate record is also extremely important as this is historical footage. A huge amount of research went into understanding the visual in space and on the Moon, including studying the mission transcripts / tape recordings from the air-to-ground transmissions to understand how the astronauts viewed things at the moment the photographs were taken. I’ve also been lucky enough to have some of those select few humans who made these journeys, who actually  took  the photographs, critique the remastered images to ensure they represent what they witnessed.

The astronauts talk of the deepest black imaginable, contrasted with the brightest, white, unfiltered sunlight – i.e. enormous contrast and dynamic range. In the airless environment there is no atmospheric haze and so the horizon is just as clear as at the astronauts feet. And understanding influences on color is very important - from color casts on the film itself, to the Sun angle that affects the color of the lunar surface, to the type of window they shot through and the source of any reflected light. Understanding how far to push the processing is key, because digital processing is so powerful. 

For the 16mm ’movie’ film, I apply an unusual stacking technique, often utilized in astrophotography, before processing the output. I separate out potentially hundreds of frames of the movie footage and align and stack them to improve the signal / noise ratio. It’s an incredibly powerful technique and the results never cease to amaze me. I had to further develop and adapt this technique however, to take account of lots of movement within the frame. For some of these, there are over 1,000 image samples from hundreds of separate frames to produce the final image.

How long did each photograph take to process?

The stills from the Hasselblads take anything from a few hours to a day. Although those that are in a poorer state are more like restorations (such as the cover shot) and can take a couple of days or more to perfect. The panoramas typically take a day or more as I have to remaster each of a number of frames and then I ‘manually’ stitch these – I don’t use any automated software for this as they’re just never absolutely correct, and as it’s historically important imagery I want to ensure I know exactly what is going on.

The 16mm stacked images, particularly if there’s a lot of camera movement typically take days. It’s such a laborious process but the reward is an image and detail of a really historic moment that’s never been seen before.

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Do you have a favorite image from the collection?

It’s so difficult to choose, I like many for many different reasons. They took 35,000 so even whittling those down to 400 hundred for the book was a near impossible task. There are images of historical significance, images that reveal something entirely new, images that instantly convey the awe inspiring nature of human space exploration and there are so many that are simply stunning – what better subject matter than fellow humans doing extraordinary things with the backdrop of 1960s spacecraft and scenes that are literally other-worldy? There are also the panoramic shots that show the scale and grandeur of the lunar landscape.

But I think it’s the moments that capture the human side to the missions, these intimate, candid moments that I’ve managed to reveal are my favorites. The Armstrong image will be difficult to beat because of historical significance but the photograph on the cover has it all - it’s such an atmospheric, cinematic portrait and it’s an image that was in such a bad state before, so has rarely been seen. And it’s also a very historic moment as he’s undertaking the world’s first docking in space (with an internal transfer of the crew).

Did you always intend to create a book with the images?

I didn’t really know what I’d do with them once I’d finished the project. I send some back to NASA and they use them for their own content and many were published in magazines and newspapers. I posted a lot to social media, and still do, and it was here that people started to suggest that they’d be great as a collection in a book – ‘the ultimate photographic record of Apollo’ if you will. It was a great idea because it gave me the opportunity to add the context of the images via captions.

I researched the air-to-ground transmissions and tape recordings from the missions to pinpoint exactly when the photographs were taken so I could determine the chronology, who took the photo, what we can see in it and pertinent quotes from the astronauts at the moment they took them. It really helps put the images, including some of the most iconic and reproduced photographs ever taken into even more context.

What would you like people to take away from Apollo Remastered?

My main goal in taking on the project was to ensure these hugely important images could be viewed in their best possible state. With the proliferation of images online, the copies of duplicate film are now further copied again and again with ease, leading to lower and lower quality images. And these images are being seen by more and more people. Things should get better, not worse and the new scans of the original film, plus the techniques I've honed over time provide the opportunity to see these amazing moments and sights like never before.

I want people to feel as though they can step on board the spacecraft, to see inside,  and ride along on these greatest ever human expeditions. To be able to look through the windows the astronauts looked through, see what they saw. This may be as close as any of us will ever get to stepping on the Moon ourselves.

I hope people will view them and be inspired to learn more about early human spaceflight, and that there was more than just Apollo 11! They will also hopefully look forward to our return to the Moon and beyond in the not too distant future with a new level of excitement, and appreciation of just how hard it is.

Apollo Remastered is available now in the US and UK, at all major booksellers. A beautiful large format book, it covers every Apollo mission from Apollo 7 to Apollo 17, and there are 400 pages of insightful photographs and captions. Buy Apollo Remastered on Amazon (UK) Buy Apollo Remastered on Amazon (US)

Lauren is a writer, reviewer, and photographer with ten years of experience in the camera industry. She's the former Managing Editor of Digital Camera World, and previously served as Editor of Digital Photographer magazine, Technique editor for PhotoPlus: The Canon Magazine , and Deputy Editor of our sister publication, Digital Camera Magazine . An experienced journalist and freelance photographer, Lauren also has bylines at Tech Radar, Space.com, Canon Europe, PCGamesN, T3, Stuff, and British Airways' in-flight magazine (among others). When she's not testing gear for DCW, she's probably in the kitchen testing yet another new curry recipe or walking in the Cotswolds with her Flat-coated Retriever.

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‘Look closely and there’s a tear in Armstrong’s eye’: the Apollo space missions as you’ve never seen them before

Nasa’s original moon mission photographs, kept locked in a freezer in Houston, are some of the most vital artefacts of human endeavour. Now, they have been remastered for a new century. Introduction by Tim Peake. Photographs restored by Andy Saunders

Y ou have to make time for awe and wonder. When you’re working in space, you’re so mission-focused, you can almost forget your environment. It can be hard to process the remoteness and isolation until you get back to Earth.

The cover image of Apollo Remastered , a new book of restored images from the Nasa archive billed as the ultimate photographic record of humankind’s greatest adventure, is of Commander Jim McDivitt looking up on Apollo 9 in 1969. I think a lot of people read awe and wonder in his face, but I see immense concentration; he’s docking the lunar module. When you’re docking, you’re using a robotic arm to grab another visiting vehicle, and it’s the most intense 90 seconds of your life. Everything depends on you.

Apollo 9, 7 March 1969 James McDivitt docks the lunar module – ‘an almost impossible task’, according to Russell Schweickart, who took the picture. Photograph: Nasa/JSC/ASU/Andy Saunders

Where I do see that awe and wonder is in a picture of Neil Armstrong moments after his historic moon walk. He’s back in the capsule and his face says: “Oh my God, what have we just done?” He looks as if he’s probably finding it quite hard to process. You see a lot of posed pictures of him, but the smile here is so genuine. Imagine knowing you’re the first human to set foot on another celestial body. Look closely and there’s a tear in his eye.

Apollo 11, 21 July 1969 Neil Armstrong photographed by Buzz Aldrin moments after their historic moonwalk. Photograph: Nasa/JSC/ASU/Andy Saunders

I was born in 1972 into a world where humans had walked on the moon. My mum loved space, so we watched all the space shuttle launches on television together. I remember seeing grainy images of Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon’s surface. The incredible engineering accomplishment that Apollo 11 represented opened me to the potential that we could do anything.

When I look at these remastered images of the Apollo missions, I’m reminded of what I experienced during my six months in space. Take the light. There’s no white like that on Earth. I love seeing it coming through the capsule window and striking the astronauts’ faces. There’s a picture of Commander Wally Schirra on Apollo 7 and the light hitting him is the whitest you’ll ever see. The sun’s light is a nuclear fusion reaction and the purest white in the universe. It isn’t yellow like we see it, or hazy – Earth’s atmosphere makes it look like that.

Apollo 13, 15 April 1970 Fred Haise tries to sleep in the cold lunar module. Photograph: Nasa/Andy Saunders (digital source Stephen Slater)

Similarly, because of the lack of atmospheric haze, the clarity with which you can see in space is incredible. You can see very far and it makes judging distances hard. In the famous picture of Aldrin on the moon, the first thing those photons of light from the sun are striking is his suit. Look at his visor and you clearly see the lunar lander, the flag, and Armstrong taking the shot. There’s no haze, no dust. Because of that there’s no scattering of light, so the shadow is crisp and sharp.

This is what triggered so many conspiracy theories. People thought: “That’s the light you get in a studio.” And they’re right, but you don’t get that outdoors on Earth. For me, that’s what’s so authentic about these pictures. I think: “This is what I relate to. This is space.”

Gemini XII, 11–15 November 1966 Buzz Aldrin takes the first selfie in space. Photographs: Nasa/JSC/ASU/Andy Saunders

Being launched into space is a violent experience. A vast amount of energy is expended as you get up to 25 times the speed of sound. You are very aware you’re entering another realm. So when the engines cut out and you go into weightlessness, it’s an experience of complete tranquillity. You think: “Wow, we’ve made it.” Photos of Earth from space capture the stillness you feel as you orbit the planet.

Earthrise is one of the most famous photographs in our history. Just for fun, try turning the page 90 degrees to the left: that’s the orientation at which the Apollo 8 crew, who took this picture, would have actually seen Earth as they popped out from behind the moon, with Earth’s north pole at the top. The orientation in the book is what we are all familiar with.

Apollo 8, 24 December 1968 Earthrise, taken by William Anders on the first crewed mission to go ‘round the moon and back’, as Nasa put it. Photograph: Nasa/JSC/ASU/Andy Saunders

What strikes you from space is that Earth is like no other planet we’ve seen. Even from hundreds of thousands of miles away you just know: there is a planet teeming with life. Against that vast black backdrop, it’s so beautiful and fragile.

When I look at static images of Earth, my mind recalls just how dynamic it looks from space. Every orbit, it changes. And we did pretty much 3,000 orbits. In springtime, when the rapeseed across Europe is in bloom, the continent turns into a wash of yellow. And then in winter, it can be a real muddy brown. You see so many thunderstorms at night.

Apollo 9, 6 March 1969 David Scott reflected back at himself in Russell Schweickart’s visor. Photograph: Nasa/JSC/ASU/Andy Saunders

There were a few things we’d always call one another over to see. Volcanoes erupting. Auroras, because they are spectacular and sometimes would stretch up to the space station and we’d be kind of flying through them. I remember seeing an incredible algae bloom in the Black Sea. A couple of big icebergs floating around in the South Atlantic.

The space station can be quite a busy place with all the radios and cameras on, and six or seven of us on it. Often I’d be the last one up, switching off the lights. It became part of my evening routine to go to the cupola window and look out at Earth while I was brushing my teeth. It was amazing to have that as my evening view.

I love the photographs of the astronauts in the capsule, too. You go from the vastness of space to these claustrophobic structures in which we have to seal ourselves in order to survive out there.

Gemini IV, 3-7 June 1965 In James McDivitt’s photograph – the first portrait taken by another human in space – Ed White leaves the craft. Photograph: Nasa/JSC/ASU/Andy Saunders

When the hatch opened for me to do my spacewalk, I felt a sense of elation. We’d been in our spacesuits for six hours and done so much preparation, then suddenly it was just the two of us in the airlock. We went down the vacuum, opened the hatch and just kind of relaxed.

I think that’s probably what the Apollo 11 crew would have felt, too. Can you imagine, after all the fatalities the space programme had endured to get there, suddenly there was this moment where they’d made the landing and all they had to do was just go outside and walk on the moon? I’m sure they were feeling: “We’ve done it.” Not just them, personally, but we, as in humanity.

Apollo 16, 23 April 1972 ‘Leaving it was an emotional moment,’ Charles Duke has said of this family photograph. Photograph: Nasa/JSC/ASU/Andy Saunders

We were lucky to have a 10-minute period on our spacewalk where we had to wait for the sun to set, so it was forced upon us to just float in space. It was such a liberating experience. On one side, you look down on Earth, then you flip on your back and you’re looking up at the Milky Way. All the time with no forces on your body whatsoever. It’s incredibly serene but you’re also constantly aware of the danger and isolation, and a feeling of massive exposure.

It’s fun to see in the early spacewalk photos how they had this “umbilical” cord keeping them attached to the spacecraft. It makes them look a little bit lost. Like they’re swimming in space. Nowadays you don’t see that. We’re always holding on to something or tethered by a four-foot strap.

Apollo 17, 13 December 1972 Eugene Cernan’s picture of Harrison Schmitt peering into a vast crater. Photograph: Nasa/JSC/ASU/Andy Saunders

I’ve always been somebody who tries to keep things in perspective but going into space changes your outlook and thoughts about mortality, about spirituality. On my spacewalk, I thought about us being small and insignificant – that’s what you naturally think when you see Earth as this tiny oasis of life in a vast universe. But from a scientific point of view, our body is made out of different elements that have been put together in a certain order, and every one of those atoms was forged in the universe, in stars. Now we’ve got to a position where we can form complex intelligent thoughts about who we are and where we come from, and develop instrumentation like the James Webb Space Telescope to understand that. And it makes you think: “We’re not small and insignificant; we’re the consciousness of the universe.” The visual experience – whether being up there in space or looking at these pictures – allows you to contemplate that.

One of the most poignant images for me is of the family photo Charlie Duke left behind on the moon. He wrote on the back: “This is the family of Astronaut Duke from Planet Earth. Landed on the Moon, April 1972.” They really maximised the scientific return of those Apollo missions; to suddenly see this, it’s like: “Yes, but don’t forget we are human.”

‘They help us imagine making the incredible journey ourselves’

By andy saunders, who restored the archive.

The original Nasa photographic film from the Apollo missions is some of the most important in existence. To maintain its condition, it is securely stored in a freezer in Building 8 at Johnson Space Center, Houston. It never leaves there – in fact it rarely leaves the freezer. The images it contains include the most significant moments in our history, as humankind left our home planet for the first time.

As the original film lay in its frozen vault for half a century, almost all the Apollo images made publicly available have been copies of master duplicates, or copies of copies, leading to a gradual degradation in quality which has only accelerated with the prevalence of digital representations of these images online.

Apollo 16, 23 April 1972 Charles Duke snaps John Young as he collects moon dust. Photograph: Nasa/JSC/ASU/Andy Saunders

In recent years, however, the original film has been removed, thawed, cleaned and scanned to an unprecedented resolution. There is a huge treasure trove of around 35,000 photographs, most of which are rarely seen, in part due to the quality or exposure of the original film. It’s easy to forget they were taken in an era when photography was purely analogue, requiring light-sensitive chemistry, film and paper. Digital scans of the transparencies are often underexposed and difficult to process.The images shown here are derived from new, high-resolution scans of the original film, painstakingly restored using image-enhancement technology. They offer an intoxicating mix of the pioneering, pre-digital 1960s era, capturing stunning otherworldly vistas, pre-computer-designed spacecraft and technology. The technical proficiency in their taking, combined with the quality of the equipment used, produced images so crisp, they border on the surreal.

Apollo 15, 2 August 1971 One of the most reproduced Apollo images is David Scott’s of James Irwin saluting the US flag. Photograph: Nasa/JSC/ASU/Andy Saunders

They help us gain an understanding of the endeavour, and imagine making the incredible journey ourselves. To glimpse the hostile environment, before opening the hatch and stepping out. To marvel at the grandeur and scale as we stand on the edge of huge craters and rilles, and gaze up at towering mountains, absorbing the magnificent desolation of this alien world. Or simply observe – as Neil Armstrong and his fellow space explorers descend the ladder, and peer through the lenses of their cameras.

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Apollo Remastered: Fly Me to the Moon

• - December 22, 2022
• by Nathalie Dassa

The first man on the Moon, the flag salute, the Blue Marble, the Earthrise, the two golf shots…: in his Apollo Remastered , the British Andy Saunders invites us to share these and many other iconic moments. His book is a one-of-a-kind photographic odyssey that retraces eleven Apollo missions, from 1961 to 1972, through 300 digitized, reprocessed, and restored images.

They are a selection from among the 35,000 negatives carefully preserved at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Most of these images are known only from copies, to protect the originals from degradation. Saunders now reveals them for the first time in this magnificent book, offering a comprehensive look at this great human epic and the evolution of space photography over the past sixty years.

Destination: The Moon!

On July 20, 1969, at 10:56 p.m. EST , Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the Earth’s satellite. Seeing these incredible images was a revelation to the young Andy Saunders who, like many others, had fallen in love with Space and the Apollo program.

This moment has stayed with him forever. Since then, the forty-eight-year-old science writer had molded his career, tying together various fields of interest, including photography, and becoming one of NASA’s foremost digital image restorers. His reputation was sealed in 2019, with the “clearest” image ever obtained of the American astronaut on the lunar soil, released on the fiftieth anniversary of the event. 

The book, published by Black Dog & Leventhal, opens with this ultimate dream come true, the seed of which was planted by President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s legendary speech “ We choose to go to the Moon ,” delivered on September 12, 1962.

“I’ve obsessed about things ever since I was a child,” explains Andy Saunders. “I loved anything that could fly, but rockets most of all, with the Moon as the ultimate destination. I always wanted to know more about the people who made that journey, about the rockets, the spacecraft, and I wanted to see more and imagine what it would be like to undertake that journey myself.” 

Apollo Remastered probes space photography from all angles and in all its complexity. The author constantly reminds us of NASA’s primary objectives: nothing we see was ever intended to become a historical document; photography was not a PR priority. Yet what emerges are images “that transcend simple factual documentation.” 

Enduring memories 

Saunders starts off with the Mercury and Gemini missions that paved the way for the lunar program, before moving on to Apollo 7 which inaugurated manned flights in October 1968. This was after the Apollo 1 disaster which had cost the crew their lives. He covers all the missions going forward, through Apollo 17, which splashed down in December 1972.

“To view the curvature of Earth from space and watch as it sinks away into the blackness. … To make fresh footprints and tracks on a pristine celestial body, untouched for 4.5 billion years”: Saunders’s work of restoration brings precision, clarity, sharpness to the images. They feel like they were taken yesterday. “As many as several hundred separate frames are stacked, aligned and processed to produce a more photolike output, revealing detail that has been lost for half a century,” Saunders notes in his Preface.

Astronauts Walter Cunningham (Apollo 7), Russell “Rusty” Schweickart (Apollo 9), Fred Haise (Apollo 13), and Charlie Duke (Apollo 16) compared the images against their memories and registered their shock at the encounter. Schweickart (b. 1935), for example, noted: “What really stands out, besides the sheer beauty of Earth, is the brightness of the atmosphere on the horizon; you know, that iridescent blue line that contrasts with the black.

There’s also a stark contrast between that and the absence of noise; it’s emptiness, there’s no air whistling in your ears; and, with the radios being voice-activated, when no one was talking, it was total silence […]. And the line of horizon is very thin; it’s a very, very impressive line […]. When you realize what that beautiful blue line is and what it represents, it’s mindboggling.” 

When Saunders is asked what his epiphany was throughout this process, he doesn’t bat an eye: “Nothing can beat the moment I created the image of Armstrong on the Moon, because no such clear picture had existed.

That’s because he was the one holding the camera, and all the images we know are of Buzz Aldrin. But this image was captured on lower-quality, small-format ‘film.’ I had the idea of applying an unusual stacking technique to 16mm film, and I couldn’t believe the result. It was as if I was back in 1969, experiencing this historic moment first-hand. No one has ever seen that moment so clearly, except Aldrin, who was watching from the window of the lunar module.”

Eleven missions, progress, and a giant leap!

Each voyage builds on the previous ones, which allows us to clearly see the progress every step of the way. Apollo 8 is the mission that provides the world with the first photographs of Earth taken by a human being, including the most iconic: the Earthrise. The year was 1968, the author recalls, a tumultuous year of violence, political unrest, and social injustice in the United States. The flight commander, Frank Borman, now 94, evoked of the thousands of telegrams received: “Thank you, Apollo 8, you saved 1968! ”

Apollo 9 produced the portrait, now restored in beautiful chiaroscuro, of the astronaut James McDivitt, which graces the book’s cover. McDivitt died on October 13, 2022 at the age of 93. Apollo 10, which was a dress rehearsal before the next great page in history, provided the first live color television broadcast from Space. 

Apollo 11 fulfilled JFK’s wild dream of a lunar landing formulated seven years earlier. The pinnacle of the mission was one legendary photograph and two sentences by Neil Armstrong (1930–2012): “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,” followed a few hours later by: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Buzz Aldrin topped it off with his “magnificent desolation,” before planting the first American flag on extraterrestrial ground.

Apollo 13 came down in history with the dramatic rescue of the crew, made up of James Lovell (b. 1928), John Swigert (1931–1982), and Fred Haise (b. 1933). The exploit was transposed to the cinema by Ron Howard, starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton. The mission is now associated with the famous phrase: “Houston, we have a problem.” Apollo 13’s reentry rekindled the interest of the American public in the space program. Glued to their television sets, viewers feverishly awaited the return of the astronauts who had lost communication for nearly a minute and a half before their capsule finally splashed down in the Pacific.

Apollo 14 brought back two unusual images of Alan Shepard (1923–1998), the first American in space, hitting a golf ball on the lunar surface. As he recalled years later: “If somebody had said before the flight, ‘Are you going to get carried away looking at the Earth from the Moon?,’ I would have said, ‘No, no way.’ But yet when I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon, I cried.” 

The final mission, Apollo 17, broke many records. Above all, it created the “most requested image in the NASA archives” and the “most reproduced image of all time,” known as “The Blue Marble.” Eugene A. Cernan (1934–2017), the last man to set foot on the dusty surface, remembers in a laid-back, existential tone: “There you were, a quarter of a million miles from Earth, laying in a hammock in a little tin can… [thinking], ‘Here I am; I’m really on the Moon. What should I be doing that I’m not doing? How can I take advantage of this? Is it real? Is it a dream?’”

Hasselblad and NASA

As you peruse the 430-page volume, you are captivated all the way through, down to the final fascinating chapter on the evolution of the medium over the course of the three space programs developed in fierce competition with the USSR.

“With Mercury, space photography was born. With Gemini it struggled toward maturity, so that Apollo space photography would give you and me, indeed the whole world, an opportunity to reach out and practically touch the Moon,” summarized Richard W. Underwood (1927–2011), former NASA Chief of Photography, Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.

Saunders then moved on to discussing the photographic equipment used: the cameras, lenses, telephoto lenses, and film. John Glenn (1921–2016) was the first astronaut to purchase a $40 camera (35mm Ansco Autoset by Minolta) for the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission. Saunders especially highlights the astronauts’ passion for “general interest” photography. In 1967, the pilot and astronaut Deke Slayton (1924–1993) “made the first formal request for photography to be integrated into the astronauts’ training.” They were given a Hasselblad to use at home.

Saunders delves into the various techniques and functions of the equipment, focusing on this breakthrough collaboration between Hasselblad and NASA. He reviews the importance of different light sources, color rendering, and adjustments to improve the details in this restoration, such as reducing the glare on the astronauts’ visors to better reveal their faces. Similarly, the lunar surface is analyzed via photos of Buzz Aldrin’s boot prints and the need for panoramic sequences and how they were made.

To conclude this fascinating story, Richard W. Underwood noted with foresight: “You know, when you get back, you’re going to be a national hero, but those photographs, if you get great photos, they’ll live forever…”

The Artemis missions: back to the Moon

Apollo Remastered is the ultimate introduction to space photography, and a fitting release for the holiday season. This timely publication also coincides with the launch of the Artemis program, with a manned Mars mission as its ultimate goal. “Artemis imagery will of course be very different from our first trips to the Moon,” Saunders comments.

“In the digital age, we can capture an almost unlimited number of photographs, but back then we were limited to only 200 per magazine. Another key difference is that we won’t have to wait for the astronauts to return to Earth to see the incredible images. We’ll have a 4K live broadcast, a 360-degree field of view, virtual reality-controlled images.”  

The objective of those future lunar missions is to establish a permanent human presence on this natural satellite and in orbit by the end of the decade. “I hope that public use photography will be more on the agenda than it was at the time of the Apollo missions, and that we will remember the photo of the first woman on the Moon! For all that, can Artemis and digital photography really match the romance of the old analog films documenting that golden era of the 1960s pioneers? That remains to be seen.” 

In his next projects, Saunders continues his personal journey to zero gravity and is preparing a prequel book about Gemini (ten flights). “The astronauts used a Hasselblad Superwide Camera (SWC), which generates truly unique images. This exceptional photography will focus this time on our beautiful Earth, rather than the spectacular Moon.”

Andy Saunders, Apollo Remastered , Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 300 images, 18 color foldouts, 432 pp., $75

Nathalie Dassa

Read More: Thomas Pesquet: “Space is Always Fascinating“

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Apollo Remastered

Included in admission

Space Pavilion  10am – 4pm

To coincide with the 50th anniversary of our last steps on the Moon, Andy Saunders will present a small selection of remastered photographs from the final mission of the programme – Apollo 17. This is a selection from the full exhibition touring the UK that will land in the North West at The Williamson Art Gallery, from April 29th – September 2nd 2023.

The original NASA photographic film from the Apollo missions is some of the most important and valuable film in existence. It is securely stored in a frozen vault at Johnson Space Center, Houston. It never leaves the building – in fact, the film rarely leaves the freezer. The images it contains include the most significant moments in our history, as humankind left the confines of our home planet for the first time and set foot on another world.

For half a century, almost every image of the Moon landings publicly available was produced from a lower-quality copy of these originals. Until now…

Andy Saunders is a British author, science writer, and one of the world’s foremost experts of NASA digital restoration. He has applied painstaking care and cutting-edge enhancement techniques to scans of the original film, to create the highest quality Apollo photographs ever published and exhibited.

The book, just released, became an instant Sunday Times Bestseller and has been shortlisted for Book of the Year in the US. Revealing detail that has been lost for half a century, the images offer astounding new insight and a mesmerising retrospective of humankind’s greatest adventure.

About Andy Saunders

Andy Saunders is a British author, science writer, and one of the world’s foremost experts of NASA digital restoration. His photographic work has been exhibited internationally at some of the most renowned venues, and regularly makes headlines in the world press – including BBC News, CBS News, Daily Telegraph, New York Times, USA Today, Smithsonian Magazine and Fox News, among others. His remastered images have also been utilised by NASA and reside in their own archives.

Apollo Remastered

The original NASA photographic film from the Apollo missions is some of the most important and valuable film in existence. It is securely stored in a frozen vault at Johnson Space Center, Houston. It never leaves the building – in fact, the film rarely leaves the freezer.

The images it contains include the most significant moments in our history, as humankind left the confines of our home planet for the first time and set foot on another world. For half a century, almost every image of the Moon landings publicly available was produced from a lower-quality copy of these originals. Until now…

Apollo Remastered will land at Williamson Art Gallery & Museum on 28 April 2023, showcasing images from Andy Saunders’ extraordinary book of the same name. Saunders invites viewers to explore the Moon landings in spectacular high definition for the very first time. By applying pain-staking care and cutting-edge enhancement techniques, he has created the highest quality Apollo photographs ever produced.

Never-before-seen spacewalks across desolate lunar landscapes, other-worldly portraits of astronauts in their spacecraft, and awe-inspiring visions of Earth above the lunar horizon; each ground-breaking image offers new insight into one of our greatest endeavours.

About Andy Saunders

Andy Saunders is a British author, science writer, and one of the world’s foremost experts of NASA digital restoration. He has applied painstaking care and cutting-edge enhancement techniques to scans of the original film, to create the highest quality Apollo photographs ever published and exhibited.

The book Apollo Remastered, released in September 2022, became an instant Sunday Times Bestseller and has been shortlisted for Book of the Year in the US. Revealing detail that has been lost for half a century, the images offer astounding new insight and a mesmerising retrospective of humankind’s greatest adventure.

Event Date: Sunday 6th August 2023 - Saturday 2nd September 2023

Categories: Arts | Digital | exhibition | Family | Film | Free | Photography | Wirral

Contact Details: Williamson Art Gallery, Tel: 0151 666 3537

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Account links, social media links, the moonwalkers: a journey with tom hanks.

About the event

Tom hanks narrates an epic experience that offers a unique new perspective on humankind’s past and future voyages to the moon., telling the stories of the apollo missions in intimate detail, the moonwalkers also provides an insight into the impending return of crewed surface missions by going behind-the-scenes of the artemis programme, including interviews between hanks and artemis astronauts., lightroom’s powerful projection and audio technology will transform the immense space into a vehicle for a spectacular immersive voyage to our closest celestial neighbour..

★★★★★ “A thrill-ride into the wonder of space.”

The standard, ★★★★★ “will have your spine tingling.”, ★★★★ “a thrilling escapist educational adventure.”, the telegraph, ★★★★ “full of space-age wonder.”.

Tom Hanks co-wrote The Moonwalkers with Christopher Riley , the double BAFTA-nominated writer-director whose work includes many of the most groundbreaking films and television programmes about space for the likes of the BBC, Netflix, and PBS.

The show tells the stories of the Apollo missions, reflecting their gripping journeys at spectacular scale. Newly filmed interviews between Hanks and astronauts of the current Artemis programme will grant an insight into the return of crewed surface missions to the moon.

Hanks himself will provide the voiceover, accompanied by a spectacular original score by Anne Nikitin whose previous work includes the Apple TV+ hit series HIJACK starring Idris Elba and the cult heist movie American Animals starring Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan.

Practical Information

Ticket prices .

Adults from £25 Students & Under 18s from £15 Under 3s go free

Younger children need to be supervised in the space and we ask that parents are considerate of the experience for all our guests.

From 6 December 2023 – 13 October 2024

One complete show lasts approximately 50 mins. You are welcome to stay for longer than one show.

Audience Suitability

Suitable for all ages. More accessibility information.

One full show is approximately 52 minutes long and runs once per hour, every hour. You are welcome to stay for longer if you wish, unless you are attending the last show of the day.

We sell tickets for show slots on the hour, every hour. 

We feel that this show is best enjoyed from start to finish, so we recommend that guests arrive on time to see the entirety of the show as intended. Latecomers will be admitted until 10 minutes past the allocated slot. Any later entry is at the discretion of the Duty Manager.

Haven’t found what you’re looking for here about the venue, booking tickets or the event? Take a look at our FAQs.

The Visuals of The Moonwalkers

Original NASA footage and breath-taking images from Andy Saunders’ Apollo Remastered will transform Lightroom’s vast space into an immersive voyage to the lunar surface, brought to life by co-directors Nick Corrigan and Lysander Ashton of 59 Productions .

Over the course of the Apollo program, the twelve astronauts to set foot on the Moon captured thousands of original photographs on medium-format Hasselblad cameras. For half a century, almost every image of the Moon landings publicly available was produced from a lower-quality copy of these originals.

For Apollo Remastered Andy Saunders has, for the first time, digitally remastered images from every mission from the original film. Revealing detail that has been lost for half a century, these images offer astounding new insight and a mesmerising retrospective of humankind’s greatest adventure. In Lightroom’s vast space, these images are seen like never before – at a scale that fully immerses the viewer, transporting them to the lunar surface.

Created by Tom Hanks & Lightroom

Designed by 59 Productions

Written by Tom Hanks & Christopher Riley

Directed by Nick Corrigan & Lysander Ashton

Producer Richard Slaney

Original music composed by Anne Nikitin

Recorded by Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Tom Kelly

Sound Design Tom Hackley

Executive Producer Tom Hanks

Executive Producers David Sabel Nick Starr

Collaborating Producer Andy Saunders

Assistant Producer Hope Delicata

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For the moonwalkers - a journey with tom hanks.

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Looking deeper into Apollo —

Fifty years later, remastered images reveal apollo 17 in stunning clarity, "come toward me, baby looks like it’s moving... don’t run over me".

Eric Berger - Dec 7, 2022 1:50 pm UTC

Shortly after midnight, 50 years ago this morning, the Apollo 17 mission lifted off from Florida. With Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, and Ron Evans on board, this was NASA's sixth and final spaceflight to the lunar surface.

Cernan and Schmitt spent three days on the Moon, setting records for the longest distance traversed in their rover—7.6 km—and the amount of lunar rocks returned. But today, what the mission is perhaps most remembered for is the fact that it was the last time humans landed on the Moon—or even went beyond low Earth orbit.

Memorably, before he boarded the Lunar Module to blast off from the Moon's surface, Cernan radioed back to Mission Control on Earth. People, he said, would return to the Moon "not too long into the future." Speaking to him much later in life, it was clear from Cernan's frustrations that he did not mean decades into the future.

When he died five years ago, at age 82, Cernan remained the last person to walk on the Moon.

Earlier this year, a British photographer named Andy Saunders published a book titled Apollo Remastered , which showcases 400 photos from the Apollo missions to the Moon. Astronauts took about 20,000 images on Hasselblad cameras during the Apollo program. Saunders has used various editing techniques, including stacking images from 16 mm video film, to create much clearer images from these iconic missions than have been seen before. The results are revealing and beautiful.

To mark the historic launch of Apollo 17, Saunders shared eight high-resolution images from his book with Ars, along with captions. You can click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Harrison Schmitt, dressed in his coveralls, has floated through the tunnel, into the Lunar Module for its checkout. He is pointing the Minolta Space Meter (to assess the lighting for the camera settings) back at Ron Evans, who is in the tunnel. Gene Cernan’s portable life support system backpack is near his right elbow.

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Great Discovery of Southern Russia: Sochi - Gelendzhik - Krasnodar (CB-33)

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