New York - 12 July 2019

1. SOUNDBITE (English) Christina Geiger, Head of Books and Manuscripts at Christie's New York:

"OK so the highlight of the sale is the Apollo 11 lunar module timeline book. This is the procedures manual that was used by Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong as they landed on the moon. It's annotated by them in real time. And it was present you know during the entire voyage of the Lunar Module Eagle. On page 10 Aldrin has written the landing coordinates of Eagle and this is the first writing done by a human being on another celestial body."

2. Woman takes "The Timeline Book -Apollo 11" out of protective case

3. Finger pointing to landing coordinates written by Buzz Aldrin on the moon

4. SOUNDBITE (English) Christina Geiger, Head of Books and Manuscripts at Christie's New York:

"The book is estimated at seven to nine million dollars."

5. Woman puts book back in protective case

SOUNDBITE (English) Christina Geiger, Head of Books and Manuscripts at Christie's New York:

"So this book we know exactly where it was you know right in between Armstrong and Aldrin on Eagle. We know exactly when it was being used because the times are recorded you know within the book and it was it was there and a unique witness to truly one of the most joyous and triumphant moments in human history. So as a historical object it's tremendously exciting and emotional."

6. Various of book

7. SOUNDBITE (English) Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby's Senior Specialist

"Of course this is the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 so we have a lot of objects coming from that mission."

8. Wide of dispaly of The Apollo 11 Moon Landing Tapes at Sotheby's auction house

9. Moon landing film

10. SOUNDBITE (English) Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby's Senior Specialist

"These tapes are incredibly important. They are the only surviving original first generation NASA recordings of the moonwalk. And if somebody I've had people ask me what does it mean original? What's a first generation recording. And you have to kind of get into the technicalities of how these tapes were actually created which is a technological marvel really how how they were able to pull this off. Westinghouse created a special lunar surface television camera. And that camera was deployed by Neil Armstrong on the lunar surface. It recorded him going down the ladder. He put it out on a tripod and it recorded all of he and Buzz Aldrin's various activities during that first EVA. Now there was no film in that camera. The data was sent back to Earth via microwaves and captured with satellites in Australia and California. And then that data was sent to Johnson Space Center at the time it was called the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. And it was recorded onto 45 slow scan tapes. Now those tapes could not be used to broadcast. So the data on that tape had to be converted into NTSC format which is the standard format for North and most of South America. What we are selling are the original tapes that they converted onto."

11. Various of moon landing recording tape and box

SOUNDBITE (English) Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby's Senior Specialist

"So it's three original two inch Ampex reels that contain the full footage. They are sold as one lot. The estimate is one to two million dollars."

12. Moon landing film

FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: apus120277

As the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing approaches, auction houses in New York are bringing to market artifacts from that mission and other trips to the moon.

At Christie's the highlight of the sale is a lunar module timeline book used by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during their trip to the moon. The astronauts made various notations in the book. The auction house expects the book to get between $7 and $9 million dollars at the auction on July 18.

Across town at Sotheby's auction house, the highlight of their space auction are NASA Videotape Recordings of the first trip to the moon expected to sell for between $1 and $2 million dollars on July 20th.