Before 2009, Apollo missions images that we saw were scanned from the secondary copies that NASA distributed to research facilities after each mission. Only in 2009 NASA made high-resolution scans from the original films & made them available to the public.
Today, we can still find the older scan results. Flat-Earthers like to find defects in these low-quality scans & use the fact as “evidence” they are just paintings. In reality, they are scanned from the printed photos, which can preserve the texture of the photo paper itself.
NASA made duplicate images after each Apollo mission and distributed them to research facilities worldwide. These copies and subsequent copies of copies are what the public has seen before 2009. Because the digital scans of these copies were made by multiple independent parties, there are many different versions of the same images, with varying differences in quality.
Meanwhile, the original films were stored in a freezer 24 hours a day. In 2009, NASA and Arizona State University made comprehensive scanning out of these original films to achieve the maximum possible results.
References
- Contoh hasil scan versi lama: Earthrise – Apollo 8 – NASA on The Commons
- Contoh hasil scan tahun 2009: Earthrise – Wikimedia Commons
- Original Apollo Films Come Out of the Cold – NASA
