The Best Space Images Ever Were Taken by Apollo Astronauts With Hasselblad Cameras

The most iconic photos from the manned exploration of space come from the monumental Apollo project. But if you're not a camera buff or a space-history enthusiast, you may not know that nearly every single famous photo from that program was taken using Hasselblad cameras.

Known among photographers for their larger-than-normal film format and amazing optical qualities, the Swedish-based Hasselblad has also had a more than 50-year partnership with NASA. Astronaut Wally Schira carried the first Hasselblad used by NASA, a 500C camera -- which he had purchased at a Houston photo supply shop -- during his turn around the Earth in a Mercury rocket in in 1962.

Subsequent Mercury and Gemini astronauts also used Hasselblads, and each space shuttle flight took an average of 1,000 and 2,000 pictures with the cameras. Both NASA and the astronauts liked the Hasselblads for many reasons.

“The cameras were relatively simple to use, and film was preloaded into magazines that could easily be interchanged in mid-roll when lighting situations changed,” wrote Gary H. Kitmacher for NASA’s history office.
The Hasselblad EDC, which was carried by each Apollo astronaut. ©Hasselblad

NASA asked Hasselblad for a modified version of their 500EL models to use during the Apollo moon missions. Known as the Hasselblad Electric Data Camera (EDC), these machines came with specially designed lenses and a glass plate that placed reference crosses on each image to make it possible to figure out the distance and heights of objects in the photos. The EDC's photo plate was also coated with a small conductive layer of silver, preventing the buildup of static electricity that could result in a spark. Finally, the outer camera was painted silver to help maintain the temperature, and all lubricants had to be replaced to allow the machines to work in the vacuum of space.

Starting with Apollo 8, astronauts carried a Hasselblad EDC with them on their lunar journeys. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin each had one during their brief but historic romp on the moon on July 20, 1969. Subsequent men also took Hasselblads, 12 of which are now sitting on the moon’s surface, left behind to save weight on the return trip. Only the film magazines returned to Earth.

Pictures from Apollo allowed people all over the world to participate in the trip. Looking through the Apollo Hasselblad film reels is like perusing someone’s weird vacation slides. Except in this case, the vacation happens to be one taken on the moon. As an additional and somewhat related bonus, the state of film technology in 1969 provides definitive proof that the moon landings could not have been faked.

In honor of the 44th anniversary of Apollo 11’s historic landing, here we present a gallery of some of the best shots that astronauts took from the moon and space with Hasselblad cameras.

Above:
Neil Armstrong stands on the moon next to the Apollo 11 lunar lander, showing the American flag nearby. Most of the Apollo 11 images were taken by Armstrong and so feature Buzz Aldrin. This is one of the few with Armstrong actually in it.

Image: NASA

Stars Flock to Opening of Helmut Newton Exhibition at Annenberg Space for Photography

A new exhibition of work by fashion photography icon Helmut Newton kicked off in style Thursday night.

The opening for the Annenberg Space for Photography's Helmut Newton: White Women • Sleepless Nights • Big Nudes, was attended by celebrities such as Rashida Jones, Cindy Crawford, Mandy Moore, Rosanna Arquette, Minka Kelly, Bella Heathcote, Bob Evans (an icon himself), Daryl Hannah  and China Chow.

Art world celebrities also came out, such as The Museum of Contemporary Art's Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Michael Govan and wife Katharine Ross, and photographers Matthew Rolston and Lauren Greenfield. They were greeted upon arriving with a big tent for cocktails that contained two chandeliers facing out to Century City's skyscrapers. The scene was a sea of black clothes, black glasses and high heels. Newton himself would have approved.

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As people strolled by the intensely erotic images -- some of them of unlikely models like 1970s and '80s body builder Lisa Lyon -- one of things being uttered was "wow -- no fake boobs! Those boobs are real." Newton brought the womanliness out in every woman he shot, but he also brought out their toughness, their strength, their inner dominatrixes. To wit, almost every photo used garters and garter stockings.

A photo of Charlotte Rampling -- who's appearing on Showtime's Dexter in its last season as a forensic shrink -- was free of fetish-wear (unlike her famed Night Porter image) -- but still made a provocative nude. That was shot in 1973.

Several Newton docs were also shown in the midst of the exhibit, and some of the evening's attendees were also  participants: Cindy Crawford and Daryl Hannah were shot by Newton at the height of their fame and show up in one film;  Paloma Picasso and Elsa Peretti also make appearances.

Famed L.A. photo gallerist David Fahey -- who was on hand -- also speaks in one of the films, crediting Helmut Newton for allowing fashion photographs to veer off of traditional fashion pictures.

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"He didn't make fashion photographs that looked like they belonged in fashion magazines," said Fahey. "He made them art."

One great line in the film: a woman auditions to be shot by Newton. After meeting her, he told her, "You're a nice girl. I'm not looking for nice girls." Maybe that's why in his day, Time magazine dubbed him "The King of Kink." In the film, Bob Evans laughs and says, "Helmut procured more women for me than anyone I've ever known. Every actress was dying to be photographed by him."

Bella Heathcote and Rashida Jones were both wearing pieces by Kelly Wearstler.

 

PayPal eyes opportunities in outer space

PayPal, which claims more than 128 million active accounts in 193 markets and 25 currencies around the globe, is now looking at outer space.

 

As space tourism is expected to take off, PayPal is exploring what payment systems will be like in outer space.

 

The payments processor is launching Thursday with the SETI Institute and others an initiative called PayPal Galactic, which will bring together leaders in the space industry to discuss the issues surrounding the commercialization of space.

 

The need for a payment system beyond earth already exists, the payments processor said in a blog post on Wednesday. Astronauts on space stations need, for example, to pay for bills back on earth and for entertainment, like music and e-books, while in space, it added.

 

"Creating a secure and functional commerce system that can operate in space at scale will not be easy, but with the support of the scientific community, other technology companies and the public at large, we hope to find the solutions to address these challenges," PayPal wrote in the blog post.

 

The eBay unit admits that it is just at the beginning.

 

Some of the issues to be addressed by PayPal Galactic in tandem with scientists and researchers are how will standard currency look like in a "truly cash-free interplanetary society," how will banking systems have to adapt, how customer support needs to develop, regulations in the new environment, and developing risk and fraud management systems.

 

The initiative brings together scientists and space industry leaders from SETI in Mountain View, California and Space Tourism Society in Los Angeles, and former astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

 

A number of companies have been set up to offer space tourism. Virgin Galactic, for example, said in May that it is on track to be the world's first "commercial spaceline." Some companies plan to set up space hotels, according to reports.

 

Follow me on Twitter @sajilpl

NASA launches IRIS solar mission to research space weather

NASA launched a solar telescope on Thursday that scientists hope will be able to unlock the secrets of how material gathers, moves and heats up as it travels through the Sun's lower atmosphere.

 

Scientists say that better understanding of this part of the solar atmosphere, which sits below the corona, could help explain and model phenomena like the ejection of solar material -- something that can cause damage to electronic circuits, power distribution networks and communications systems on Earth when it gets large enough.

 

The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) was launched from a Pegasus rocket that was dropped from the belly of an L-1011 TriStar aircraft flying above the Pacific Ocean, about 150 kilometers off the central coast of California.

 

The aircraft departed Vandenberg Airforce Base in southern California and dropped the rocket carrying the IRIS spacecraft at 7:27pm local time (2:36am GMT Friday). All systems appeared to be performing normally in the first few minutes after launch.

 

IRIS will focus on two parts of the lower solar atmosphere that exhibit an unusual effect: temperatures in the region are believed to be around 6,000 Kelvin near the Sun's surface and heat up to around a million Kelvin at the top of the region. That's different to our conventional experience with heat sources, where temperatures rise as the source is approached.

 

Tracking the movement of material into the upper atmosphere could help model solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections that can cause damage on Earth.

 

"What is this interface region? We don't know," said Alan Title, IRIS principal investigation at Lockheed Martin. "The instruments that looked at this region in the past have had about 20 times poorer resolution spatially and about 20 times poorer resolution spectrally. Basically, we've been looking at things that happened so fast, that data taken as slowly as previous instruments have done hasn't given us any information."

 

"But even more fundamentally, there's not been a push to look at this region because the atomic physics in this region is very, very, very complicated," he said. It's only been in the last decade that computer models scientists hope can accurately model the Sun's lower atmosphere have even become available, he said.

 

Those simulations have required NASA's Pleiades supercomputer at its Ames Research Center, in Mountain View. Pleiades, manufactured by SGI and based around Intel Xeon processors, was ranked as the 19th most powerful computer in the world on the June 2013 Top 500 list of supercomputers. When it debuted on the list in June 2011 it was the 7th most powerful computer globally.

 

As the world's climate changes and ever more sensitive electronics is deployed, study of the effects of the Sun on Earth are becoming more pressing.

 

A recent study by Lloyd's of London said between 20 million and 40 million people in the U.S. are at risk of being without power for between two weeks and two years should a violent solar storm hit. The country is particularly at risk because of its aging power grid.

 

Power outages were much on the mind of the NASA team this week. IRIS was originally meant to be launched on Wednesday evening, but was delayed by a day because of a significant power outage at Vandenberg Airforce Base earlier in the week.

 

The irony of the delay wasn't lost on Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, which will be controlling the satellite and crunching a lot of the data it produces.

 

"We believe that some, maybe a lot of power outages, actually have a lot to do with solar activity," he said. "So the better we can understand the physics going on, the better we can understand the activity, the better we can potentially predict and mitigate these problems."

 

Follow me on Twitter: @sajilpl

PayPal boldly ponders what no payment processor has pondered before: space

PayPal, which claims more than 128 million active accounts in 193 markets and 25 currencies around the globe, is now looking at outer space.

 

As space tourism is expected to take off, PayPal is exploring what payment systems will be like in outer space.

 

The payments processor is launching Thursday with the SETI Institute and others an initiative called PayPal Galactic, which will bring together leaders in the space industry to discuss the issues surrounding the commercialization of space.

 

The need for a payment system beyond earth already exists, the payments processor said in a blog post on Wednesday. Astronauts on space stations need, for example, to pay for bills back on earth and for entertainment, like music and e-books, while in space, it added.



"Creating a secure and functional commerce system that can operate in space at scale will not be easy, but with the support of the scientific community, other technology companies and the public at large, we hope to find the solutions to address these challenges," PayPal wrote in the blog post.

 

The eBay unit admits that it is just at the beginning.

 

Some of the issues to be addressed by PayPal Galactic in tandem with scientists and researchers are how will standard currency look like in a "truly cash-free interplanetary society," how will banking systems have to adapt, how customer support needs to develop, regulations in the new environment, and developing risk and fraud management systems.

 

The initiative brings together scientists and space industry leaders from SETI in Mountain View, California and Space Tourism Society in Los Angeles, and former astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

 

A number of companies have been set up to offer space tourism. Virgin Galactic, for example, said in May that it is on track to be the world's first "commercial spaceline." Some companies plan to set up space hotels, according to reports.

 

Follow me on Twitter @sajilpl

Olympic Torch (But Not Olympic Flame) Headed To Space

Former cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, left, the first man to perform a spacewalk, passed an Olympic torch to Mikhail Tyurin, who will lead the mission to the International Space Station in November.

The president of Russia's Sochi 2014 Olympic Committee could hardly contain himself — although Twitter contained him to 140 characters at a time:

"Our ambition to conquer Space 1st time ever in the Olympic history becomes reality," Dmitry Chernyshenko tweeted Monday. "#Sochi2014's Torch Relay will reach the open space!"

In a series of tweets, Chernyshenko announced that cosmonauts will carry an official Sochi 2014 Olympic torch to the International Space Station, and then out on a spacewalk.

Cosmonauts will take the torch to the space station in early November. But, as AroundTheRings reporter Mark Bisson tweets, the torch will not hold the sacred Olympic flame, which is traditionally ignited by a Greek high priestess (actually an actor), using the rays of the sun at Mt. Olympus.

Bisson says that an "imitation flame" will go to the International Space Station.

That's because an open flame in a spaceship could be, well, dangerous. Still, once back on earth at the opening ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics in February, the space torch will be all fired up.

"The same torch that will go to the open space afterwards will be used to light the Olympic cauldron at the Opening Ceremony of the Games," says Chernyshenko, who seemingly could not be happier about the development.

"Nothing is impossible... #Sochi2014 is going to the Space :-) Let's Go - Po-ekhali!" he tweeted today, including a photo of himself in a spacesuit.

"Nothing is impossible," except, of course, keeping an open flame in a spacecraft for a long period of time.

But, given a Winter Olympics at a Black Sea resort with palm trees and expected Olympic spending of around $51 billion, almost nothing seems impossible.