Restored NASA Apollo archive of 10,000 photos released

NASA has released a cache of photos on a new Flickr archive. Picture: NASA/Flickr/Project Apollo Archive

A PHOTO archival project has issued a massive archive of over newly-restored 10,000 photos chronicling the Apollo era of NASA missions, dating as far back as 1968

A treasure trove of images donated by the US space agency of past Apollo missions have been posted on Flickr by Project Apollo Archive.

The extensive collection features images from the Apollo 7 mission in 1968 right up to Apollo 17 in 1972. The gallery has already gained more than 15,000 followers on Flickr.

Captured on a variety of photo equipment, including specially modified Hasselblad cameras and 35mm film, the photographs have been digitised and painstakingly restored to a resolution of 1800 dpi. This time-consuming process began around 2004.

The high definition results have revealed new craters on the moon’s surface, and even the pores on the faces of the astronauts pictured.

Breathtaking shots of Earth from space and the star-spangled banner, plunged into the surface of the moon, are just the tip of the iceberg.

You’ll even find what can only be described as “space selfies” of astronauts Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt of the Apollo 17 mission – nearly 30 years before the first camera phone.

Taken by astronauts and not photographers, some of the images are blurred and repetitive, but each one is an awe-inspiring piece of history that everyone (not just lunar exploration enthusiasts) should see.

The full archive is available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive