Astronaut on the moon Pictures

The process, perhaps unsurprisingly, was an extremely long one according to Kipp Teague, who runs the Project Apollo Archive. "Around 2004, Johnson Space Center began re-scanning the original Apollo Hasseelblad camera film magazines, and Eric Jones and I began obtaining TIFF (uncompressed, high-resolution) versions of these new scans on DVD, " Teague tells . "These images were processed for inclusion on our websites, including adjusting color and brightness levels, and reducing the images in size to about 1000 dpi (dots per inch) for the high-resolution versions." Because there was so much demand for higher-resolution versions, Teague decided to reprocess the entire set and upload them to Flickr magazine by magazine.

The results speak for themselves. Hasseblads are known for capturing impressive detail — they're referred to as "medium format" cameras, which means the film they use is three to four times as large as a standard 35mm frame — and so much of that translates in these new images. Craters in the surface have new life, the pores of astronauts' skin show up, and specks of propellant are even visible in images of the lunar landing module's separation from the orbiter. (Some later missions used 35mm film as well, some of which can be seen in the archive.)

The best news might be that there's even more to come. While the set includes photos from most of the missions, there are no images from Apollos 7, 8, 9, 10, or 13. Some of those will be added to the set soon, according to Teague, while the rest will have to wait. That said, 8, 400 is plenty to start with, and we've picked just a few (seen below) that show off some of the detail. Fans of lunar exploration should have a field day with these unprecedented views of our gray little satellite. Moon landing truthers, on the other hand...