Ever go on vacation and take some pictures and maybe a video of your trip? Sometimes they get lost and that really sucks. Imagine that you were the first person (astronaut) to take a trip (to the moon) have some video (broadcast to millions of people). You’d want to keep that right? Someone (society) might want to see it one day.
Only in recent years was the agency reminded of what it once had — clean and crisp first-man-on-the-moon video images that could be especially valuable now that NASA is planning a return trip.
About 36 years after the tapes went into storage, NASA was suddenly eager to have them. There was just one problem: The tapes were nowhere to be found.
Oops.