You Asked:

How did they film the moon landing? — Steph, Chicago, Ill.

Marshall Brain Answers:

When Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder of the Lunar Module to step onto the moon for the first time, there obviously wasn’t anyone standing on the moon to film him. So how did they get the TV images?

The mission had a television camera built by Westinghouse, and NASA had designed a system that would allow it to transmit directly to earth from the moon. To film Armstrong, they simply had to mount the camera in a way that it could see Armstrong as he descended the ladder.

Here are several pages that will help you understand how it worked:

1) This page talks about the camera itself and shows you what it looked like.

2) This page shows you where it was mounted.

3) This page shows the hoops NASA had to jump through to get the images to earth.

Here is what made it to earth:

There was also a 16 mm movie camera that Buzz Aldrin used from above to record the first steps, and this camera created a film of the first steps that was developed once the astronauts returned to earth:

Here is the description of the video:

Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon during the Apollo-11 mission are often shown as seen by the Apollo Lunar Television Camera – a black and white slow-scan TV camera, but there was another camera on the mission which captured the first steps on the moon and other portions of the mission.

The Maurer 16mm Data Acquisition Camera was a 16mm movie camera that NASA loaded with the highest quality, finest grained, film stock of its day. The camera was capable of running at 24 fps for full motion recording, 12 fps for near full motion recording as well as 6 and 1 fps for time laps recording. (The slowed recording speeds used to conserve film).

On Apollo-11 the DAC was mounted near the window of the lunar module and was initially operated at full speed to record the historic first portion of the EVA by Neil Armstrong. Buzz Aldrin remained in the lunar module to record the EVA and to operate other instruments such as the TV downlink before joining Armstrong on the lunar surface. If you look carefully you can see Buzz Aldrin’s reflection on the window as he works in the lunar module.

More info: How the Apollo Spacecraft Worked