So, I have good grounds for believing William Rutledge's testimony: first of all there really is (was?) a strange and big object on the far side of the Moon, and its shape is very close to that one showed in the video on YouTube: I am talking about the object visible in a couple of NASA pictures taken by the Apollo 15 mission. The cigar-shaped object looks like leant beside a crater, lightly oblique; and the visible zone in the footage is very similar to the visible region in some originals NASA photos taken by Apollo 15: the Moon region coordinates where there is the unusual object are the following: Latitude: 10° S - Longitude: 117.5° E, Southwest of Delporte and North of Izsak. I have checked on a Lunar chart: it is on the backside of the Moon.

The official NASA photos are available on the website of the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI, in Houston), which is a "research institute that provides support services to NASA and the planetary science community": the links to find the pictures (the AS15-P-9630 and the AS15-P-9625, from the the Apollo Image Atlas) are the following: www.lpi.usra.edu

Moreover, it is meaningful that the links were provided by William Rutledge (how did he know the details of those panoramic picture?).

AS15-P-9625, Apollo Image Atlas – Courtesy NASA/LPI

AS15-P-9630, Apollo Image Atlas – Courtesy NASA/LPI

A second reason, in my opinion, is that William Rutledge is not gaining money from doing that. A third reason is the detailed story he told me in the following interview, full of technical and other specific aspects coherent among them. There are just some incomplete biographical notes about the famous NASA astronauts. But he answered kindly to every single question I have put to him, without hesitation, and he provided several names of the presumed American and Soviet people involved in that classified space mission. Some of them are still alive. It could be interesting to be able having a comment from them.

The fourth reason is the quality of the footages on YouTube, which seem consistent with a shot equipment available during the '70s and the first '80s. I asked to an expert in shot, an Italian friend of mine whose name initials are F.D. His comment about the footage spread by William Rutledge was the following:

"[…] i punti luce sovraesposti e la relativa 'scia' presentano tutte le caratteristiche dei difetti delle telecamere basate su tubo di tipo VIDICON. La 'scia' consiste in una persistenza del segnale video all'interno del tubo. […] Nonostante quest'ultimo sia un sistema di ripresa televisivo obsoleto, oggi la ditta Hamamatsu (www.hamamatsu.com) realizza telecamere VIDICON all'infrarosso.

In English it means:

"[…] the overexposed light points and the relative trail show all the features of the TV cameras faults based on VIDICON-type tube. The 'trail' is composed of a persistence of the video signal inside the tube. […] In spite this one is an obsolete TV shot system, today the Hamamatsu firm (www.hamamatsu.com) makes infrared VIDICON cameras."

And, as a matter of fact, among the several different varieties of photographic equipment aboard the Apollo 17, there was a Westinghouse color TV camera, which could used in the command module, handheld or bracket-mounted. It is almost obvious thinking to a similar camera equipment for the presumed Apollo 20, taken place in 1976 according to William Rutledge. (source: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo17/A17_Photography_cameras.html.)

In any case, the public will be the first judge of this story, which could become in the near future the definitive proof that we are not alone in the Universe.

ZOOM-AS15-P-9625.jpg – NASA, Apollo 15