Particular soars away with Apollo moon landings photos

Particular Books has soared away with the “definitive” photographic record of the Apollo moon landings.

Casiana Ionita, publishing director at Penguin Press, bought world rights to Apollo Remastered from Jeff Shreve at the Science Factory. The book, which contains “extraordinary”, newly restored images from the NASA archives by photographer and image restorer Andy Saunders, will publish in autumn 2022.

The publisher explained: “In a frozen vault in Houston sits the original NASA photographic film of the Apollo missions. Almost every single image of the Moon landings publicly seen has been a lower quality copy of these frozen originals. Over the past few years image restorer Andy Saunders has been taking newly available digital scans, and applied painstaking care and cutting-edge enhancement techniques to create the highest quality Apollo photographs ever produced. Never-before-seen spacewalks and crystal-clear portraits of astronauts in their spacecraft, along with startling new visions of the earth and the moon, provide an astounding new insight into one of humankind's greatest endeavours. This is the definitive record of all Apollo missions and a mesmerising, high definition journey into the unknown.”

Saunders is one of the world's foremost experts of NASA digital restoration. His work has been exhibited at museums, and featured by BBC News, the Daily Telegraph, Smithsonian's Air & Space Magazine, Ars Technica, the Sun, as well as in NASA's own archives.

He said: “It's a privilege to be able to work on such incredible photographs from a defining era. We typically see low quality transfers of this analog film, many generations from the original. In going back to the original flight film from the cameras, and applying the latest digital processing techniques, and time and effort, we can now bring out detail as never before. I can't think of any film in existence that is more deserving of this level of care and effort."

Ionita added: “Looking at hundreds of photos that have been expertly remastered by Andy Saunders has immensely brightened these past few months. Andy has an extraordinary ability to help us see things anew – not just outer space but also all the tiny details that made it possible for human beings to go on the Apollo missions. These photos genuinely make you feel like you are there with them in the spacecraft and on the moon.”