He was the first man to walk on the moon, but Neil Armstrong didn’t have any good photos to prove it. He was holding the camera most of the time, so it was Buzz Aldrin who got all the awesome shots. Here is the only image that clearly shows Armstrong’s face as he walks on the moon, freshly dug up from archives of old NASA photos.
The image is a high-definition scan taken from footage on-board the Apollo 11. Only for a fraction of a second, with his mirror visor up, you can clearly see Neil’s face as he walked by the Lunar Module, off to do whatever was the mission’s next task.
It’s not only an awesome image — it’s also a good reminder of Armstrong’s character. For him, it was all about the mission and his country, never about himself. As his family and his biographers say, he was America’s most reluctant hero.
The elusive frame was spotted in an old film reel by famed space author Andrew Chaikin, who included it in the book Voices from the Moon. [collectSPACE]