WHITFIELD: NASA is marking a major anniversary, 40 years ago "Apollo 11" was making its way to the moon and Neil Armstrong was about to make that giant leap for mankind. To mark the occasion, NASA has something new to show you. Here's CNN's Tom Foreman.</s>TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): It's the iconic image of our efforts to explore space, and now as we approach the 40th anniversary of man's first visit to the moon, NASA has restored and enhanced the original grainy black-and-white images, including that one that riveted the planet.</s>FOREMAN: Astronaut Neil Armstrong setting foot on the lunar surface on July 20th, 1969. The new high-definition video is an improvement over the original but NASA officials believe that somewhere out there is video that could take our breath away. Images like this but sharper and clearer than anything seen before. The problem is, no one knows where it is.</s>FOREMAN: Regular shuttle missions and the crisp-color images they transmit have space fans a little spoiled. You forget just how complicated it was to transmit pictures from space to earth in 1969. Here is how it worked; a small camera built into "Apollo 11" scanned the lunar landing in a unique format unsuitable for regular TV. Those images were transmitted to tracking stations in southeast Australia and California's Mojave Desert, where they were converted to a standard format and sent on to Houston, losing picture quality every step of the way. But veterans of the Apollo mission recently reminded NASA that technicians at both ground stations recorded the transmissions onto special tapes, which if converted now with modern technology, would produce the highest quality images of man on the moon ever seen. A search has been launched but three years into it, after scouring multiple NASA facilities, there's no sign of those tapes. And now many feel the spectacular images on them, images far superior to anything you've ever seen may be lost forever. Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.</s>WHITFIELD: The day's top stories in one hour. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. "Your Money" begins right now.
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