NASA’s TV Cameras
The Apollo 17 lunar module and the moment when astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Gene Cernan, the last two men to be on the moon’s surface, left to return to Earth.
Who ran the camera as it pans up to follow the ascent module?
The view was shot from a video camera mounted on the lunar rover. And it remains on the moon to this day.
It was remotely managed by ground control via the big antenna on the rover itself.
The filming was meticulously planned and time to account for a 1.2-second lag in the radio signal over the 384,000 kilometers or 238,000 miles from the moon to the Earth.
NASA’s Large TV Cameras
NASA had contracted American company RCA to create a portable camera to film astronauts through their Rover trips.
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At the time, broadcast cameras were large and quite heavy. But RCA’s camera was about the dimension of a lump of bread.
It weighed 2 kilograms or four and a half pounds. It had a 320 by 200 pixels resolution at a rate of 10 frames per second.
Nothing compared to today’s measures, but remember that this was early 1970s technology.
The Small Lunar Camera Could Operate at 200 Degrees
This robust little camera could operate at temperatures up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit or 93 degrees centigrade.
Its sending unit was filled with radiators and beeswax. The sealed casing absorbed heat as the wax melted.
However, the astronauts still had to continually brush the dust off the foil encasing to keep its reflective properties and to stop the camera from heating and permanently breaking down.
Before we continued the “J” missions, launch and landing on the moon’s surface could only be filmed from inside the lunar lander.
Motor-Driven Moon Cameras
However, on the Apollo 15 mission in 1971, a new ambitious plan was to leave a camera on the transport and film the launch from a so-called VIP spot near the lunar module.
But through the three days of work on the surface, the clutch of the motor-driven camera mount became predisposed to slipping and kept getting stuck.
Ground control always had to ask the astronauts to reset the camera’s view.
The choice was to leave a camera facing forward to carry out more lunar surveys during the days ahead instead of risking the camera getting stuck after the lunar launch.
On the succeeding mission in 1972, the Apollo 16 astronauts mistakenly left the rover too close to the lunar module than they were told to.
And in the launch, the camera could only follow for a few seconds before losing its target.
Apollo 17 was the third and last chance to film the entire launch.
NASA communications operator Ed Fendell remembered that the commander Gene Cernan knew, but if he didn’t leave the rover in the right place, Fendell would kill him when he returned.
Guarding the clock, Fendell sent the command to start the camera’s tracking sequence a moment before launch.
It worked. The camera moved up and followed Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, climbing in the ” Challenger ” lunar module until it disappeared.
Fendell angled the camera back to film the dust settling on the descent stage and the equipment remaining in the Taurus Littrow Valley.
Spectacular Lunar Images
After the challenger met with the command service module in lunar orbit, Cernan and Schmitt transferred samples and equipment before separating the CSM to return to Earth.
The abandoned lunar module was scheduled to deorbit and crash 15 kilometers or about nine miles from the Apollo 17 site.
Edd Fendell’s idea was to film it. The team ran precise calculations to point the camera in the right direction; however, the crash was never caught on camera.
Despite the challenges faced by designing and running Apollo’s cameras.
Ultimately, they succeeded in taking some of the most spectacular lunar images of the 20th century.
Apollo 11 Camera Equipment
Apollo 11 carried several cameras for gathering data and recording different aspects of the mission.
Including one 70-mm Hasselblad electric camera. Two 70-mm lunar surface superwide-angle cameras.
They also brought one Hasselblad El data camera and two 16-mm Maurer data acquisition cameras.
They took one 35-mm surface close-up stereoscopic camera and finally a television camera.
Neil Armstrong’s Hasselblad Camera
Neil’s Hasselblad camera was thought to be mislaid or left on the lunar surface.
But in 2015, after Apollo 11 commander Neil died in 2012, his widow contacted the National Air and Space Museum to notify them she had discovered a white cloth bag in one of Neil Armstrong’s wardrobes.
The bag carried a forgotten Hasselblad camera used to capture pictures of the first lunar landing. The camera is currently exhibited at the famous National Air and Space Museum.
Swedish Camera Connections
“Svenska Metallverken,” The Swedish Metalworks in Upplands Vasby, a small town in Sweden, had a tiny but significant role in NASA’s documentation of space travel.
The pictures on the moon were taken with the Swedish-made Hasselblad camera.
On the journey to the moon, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin had their Hasselblad camera, the model 500 EL.
The Hasselblad camera is a Swedish design developed by Victor Hasselblad in Gothenburg.
The camera mainly consists of three parts: a camera chassis, a film magazine, and a lens.
The metal frame of the chassis, built around the camera, was manufactured during the 1960s and 70s by the Swedish Metalworks in Upplands Vasby.
After the moon rides, twelve Hasselblad cameras with parts from the Swedish Metalworks in Upplands Vasby are still on the moon.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and please feel free to browse my website for more exciting facts about the Mission to the Moon, especially Apollo 11.
If you’re interested in diving deeper into the history and intricacies of the iconic Apollo missions, be sure to check out our complete guide to the Apollo program.