Nearly half a century ago, NASA took one giant leap for mankind with the Apollo program, which landed 12 men on the moon on nine missions between 1968 and 1972. The astronauts were equipped with Hasselblad medium-format cameras and instructed to take photos that have remained largely unseen by the public–until now. Over the past two weeks, more than 8,400 photos of the moon landings have been uploaded to Flickr by the Project Apollo Archive. Viewable in all their unprocessed, hi-res glory, the snapshots depict fascinating scenes that are literally out of this world.
The enormous collection of extraterrestrial images was scanned by the Johnson Space Center and archived by Kipp Teague, an IT director at Lynchburg College who has spent years compiling thousands of NASA's Apollo photos.
“Clearly, there's a good interest to see this material,” he told National Geographic after seeing the overwhelmingly positive response to his mass uploads. “I could not leave this world with this stuff sitting on my shelf.”
Below are some of our favorite shots from Teague's curated gallery. Check out the rest of the photos on Flickr.
Buzz Aldrin
Neil Armstrong
Project Apollo Archive: Flickr
via [Lost at E Minor]
