In 2021, we acquired a mystery film reel. The canister holding the 16mm film had NASA information on it, so we purchased it without knowing what was on it.
We sent it to multiple digitization companies, but the spool holding the film was unique and most companies didn't have the equipment to work with it. We eventually found a service that could digitize the film, and when we watched it we couldn't believe what we saw.
It was original NASA footage shot in 1967 of the Surveyor 7 lunar lander, shot from inside the cleanroom at Kennedy Space Center.
After extensively searching through NASA's archives and not finding this film anywhere, we decided to upload the film online to preserve it for posterity.
The Surveyor program consisted of 7 spacecraft launched in the 1960’s to practice landing on the moon and evaluate the lunar surface in preparation for the Apollo program. Five of the spacecraft landed safely on the moon, including Surveyor 7.
Surveyor 7 landed on the rim of Tycho crater, which is easily visible from Earth.
NASA has a long history of filming every step of spacecrafts' journeys from assembly to launch. In the case of a mission failure, these films can be reviewed to help identify the source of the failure.
Now that it's been preserved, you can own a piece of this lost NASA footage. Includes approximately 12 frames of the film stored in an acrylic display case.
