WASHINGTON ( CNN ) -- NASA released newly restored videos Thursday of two U.S. astronauts taking the world 's first steps on the moon . NASA hired a digital restoration firm to improve video showing astronauts taking first steps on the moon . The images were released just four days before the 40th anniversary of the historic event that captivated the world on July 20 , 1969 . The release , part of a larger Apollo 11 moonwalk restoration project , features 15 key moments from the historic lunar excursion , NASA said in a statement . Astronaut Neil Armstrong , now 78 , was the first to venture onto the moon 's surface after the lunar module Eagle landed on the so-called Sea of Tranquility . Following him was Buzz Aldrin , now 79 . The videos are far superior to the initial dark , fuzzy images people watched on their television sets at the time , although they are far from crisp . Watch a clearer view of `` one small step for man '' » . The original tapes of images sent back to Earth by Apollo 11 have been lost , and the camera that shot them was left on the moon , according to a NASA official . Given those circumstances , the team of Apollo-era engineers who helped produce the 1969 live broadcast of the moonwalk acquired the best of the broadcast-format video from a variety of places . These images were turned over to a firm specializing in digitized video restorations , said Mark Hess , chief of public affairs at NASA 's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt , Maryland . `` It was the very best of the broadcast video that we were able to locate from all the sources , '' he said , referring to any place that had the original broadcast . `` The quality of those varied widely . '' One source was kinescopes found in film vaults at NASA 's Johnson Space Center in Houston that had not been seen for 36 years , NASA said . Kinescopes are the motion-picture records of a television program . NASA is fairly sure that the original tapes were placed in storage , and taken out and used in the 1970s and 1980s , Hess said . `` Once that technology became irrelevant , they were probably destroyed , '' Hess said . These are just the first restored videos to be released , he said . NASA expects that by September , the firm will have worked on the entire moonwalk , and the quality of those videos -- about three hours worth -- will be even better than today 's . The company NASA used , Lowry Digital of Burbank , California , specializes in restoring old Hollywood films and video . iReport.com : Where were you during the moon landing ? The images posted Thursday on the NASA Web site include a two-minute video montage with highlights of the moonwalk , and separate videos of Armstrong and Aldrin descending a ladder to the moon 's dusty surface . Each partially restored video is shown beside an original image , for comparison . Another comparison video shows Armstrong reading a commemorative plaque on the lunar module , which says in part : `` Here men from the planet Earth first stepped upon the moon -- July 1969 . '' The montage video shows highlights from the Apollo 11 mission , from the launch in Florida to the spacecraft 's departure from the moon .
NEW : NASA used company that specializes in restoring old WASHINGTON films . NEW : Some images obtained from kinescopes found in Kinescopes 's film vaults . Videos released Thursday before the first anniversary of 40th moonwalk . Videos far superior to the initial dark , fuzzy images but far from crisp .