After Sputnik by Martin Collins

Author:Martin Collins [Collins, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-06-204361-0
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

Apollo 12 Maurer Data Acquisition Camera

1969

“But essentially the camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own.”

—SUSAN SONTAG, On Photography, 1974

Astronaut Al Bean climbs down the lunar module to the surface. The color television camera, accidentally damaged by Bean, is attached to the module below and to the right of the flag.

THE INVENTION of the camera by Louis Daguerre in 1837 inaugurated the era of the photographic image, allowing humans to visually relate to people and events they might never personally know. This sense of “being there” expanded with the advent of motion picture and television imaging. In the early 1960s, these visual technologies became integral to the NASA spaceflight program, facilitating mission documentation and scientific research, but especially allowing those back on Earth to participate in one of history’s great dramas—the exploration of space by humans. This Apollo 12 data acquisition camera, transferred from NASA in 1972, highlights the role of television and film in connecting Earth-bound viewers with lunar explorers.

As the U.S. space program moved toward the Moon, NASA formulated plans to document the missions visually and transmit live images back to Earth. Still, film, and television cameras allowed the public to see the astronauts at work—and, in the case of television, to see what the astronauts saw, to be part of their reality. Via television from the Moon, nearly 500 million people around the world witnessed Neil Armstrong’s first steps on to the lunar surface as it happened, and then continued to see much of Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s exploration of the Sea of Tranquility.

On Apollo 12, the second lunar mission, NASA’s elaborate effort to include the public in the drama of exploration met with some misfortune. The mission almost never moved past liftoff: lightning struck the giant Saturn V launch vehicle within moments of leaving the ground. Astronauts Charles “Pete” Conrad, Alan Bean, and Richard Gordon resolved the resulting electrical outages quickly and headed for the Moon. In piloting the lunar module (LM), Conrad and Bean accomplished an incredible feat: they landed within yards of the Surveyor III lunar probe (sent to the Moon in 1967), then recovered and returned to Earth one of its cameras. However, this recovery and nearly all of their other activity on the Moon never reached television viewers. Shortly after recording Conrad’s first steps on the Ocean of Storms, Bean accidentally damaged the television camera, mounted on the LM. As he repositioned the camera to record other mission activities, the lens pointed directly at the Sun (or perhaps at the highly reflective surface of the LM), burning out the optics.

After this mishap, this data acquisition camera (DAC)—returned to Earth by the astronauts—provided the only means to document lunar surface activities with moving images. Typically, the DAC only documented technical mission tasks such as landing and lunar ascent. This documentation proved valuable, but as a motion picture film camera, the DAC could not provide live pictures to Earth. The public did not have the opportunity to “see”

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