NASA footage restored in HDTV

More than 100 hours of classic footage from NASA's Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space missions have been restored for HDTV and will be made available through the space agency’s archives.

The HD restoration project was performed by the Discovery Channel for “When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions,” a documentary series due to premiere in June.

NASA will make the HD library available to the public as well as researchers.

The archive includes dramatic shots of the first American spacewalk, conducted in 1965 by Gemini 4 astronaut Ed White. Among the other highlights are rocket launches, moon shots, the Apollo-Soyuz linkup in 1975 and rarely seen footage from early astronaut training.