NASA's Apollo Archive: 10 Fascinating Images
NASA enthusiasts now have access to more than 8,000 photos from the space agency's Apollo mission. InformationWeek has selected 10 of our favorites.
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While the Apollo missions to the Moon have produced some of the most iconic photos of the 20th century, Neil Armstrong's endlessly quoted proclamation upon setting foot on the surface, and an annoying cadre of conspiracy theorists, there's still a lot more to discover about our missions to the Moon.
Thanks to the Apollo Archive, first created in 1999 by Kipp Teague as a companion website to his "Contact Light" personal retrospective on Project Apollo, space enthusiasts now have access to more than 8,400 new photos of Apollo missions.
As of Oct. 2, this new repository of Apollo photographs is available to the public through Flickr.
"Around 2004, Johnson Space Center began re-scanning the original Apollo Hasselblad camera film magazines, and Eric Jones and I began obtaining TIFF (uncompressed, high-resolution) versions of these new scans on DVD," Teague told The Planetary Society. "These images were processed for inclusion on our websites, including adjusting color and brightness levels, and reducing the images in size to about 1000 dpi (dots per inch) for the high-resolution versions."
[Here's a look at NASA's latest mission: New Horizons.]
Project Apollo, was the third US human spaceflight program carried out by NASA, and accomplished landing the first humans on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. The final Apollo 17 mission in December 1972 marked the sixth Moon landing and the ninth manned mission beyond low Earth orbit.
While thousands of Apollo photos are available on Flickr, InformationWeek has taken a selection of our favorites and collected them for your viewing pleasure here.
(All images courtesy of NASA)
Taken during the Apollo 15 mission while in lunar orbit, for the rendezvous with the lunar module (LM), this photo shows a section the Moon's heavily cratered surface. Apollo 15 was the ninth manned mission in the program and the fourth to land on the Moon.
While it might not have the clarity and focus on the iconic Earthrise photo taken during the Apollo 8 mission, our fragile blue marble can be clearly seen, contrasted with the muddy-colored surface of the Moon.
Taken during the Apollo 17 mission from the LM while in orbit around the Moon, this stunning shot of the surface is made even more ethereal thanks to the haunting, ghostly glare running up the left edge of the frame.
Like a shot straight out of science fiction, this photo depicts the rendezvous with the LM and the orbiter after the moon landing of Apollo 15. The photo was taken by Al Worden, the command module pilot for the mission, which was also the first mission on which the Lunar Roving Vehicle was used.
The Apollo 14 mission, the third to land on the Moon, followed the heart-stopping saga of the interrupted Apollo 13 mission. Several modifications were made to the service module electrical power system to prevent a repeat of that accident. Commander Alan Shepard hit two golf balls on the lunar surface with a makeshift club he had brought from Earth.
Snapped by a crew member of Apollo 7, the first Apollo mission to carry astronauts, this photo shows the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, with the Suez Canal located on the upper left side of the photo and the Nile Delta to the left of that.
This image from the Apollo 9 mission of the command module Gumdrop was taken with the crew in Earth orbit. The three astronauts spent 10 days in low Earth orbit testing several aspects critical to landing on the Moon, including the LM engines, navigation systems, and docking maneuvers.
This photo shows a smiling Donn F. Eisele, command module pilot for Apollo 7. Eisele served as backup command module pilot for the Apollo 10 flight, but was excluded from Apollo 13 because of his reluctance to interrupt tests aboard Apollo 7 for the television coverage NASA requested.
This shot from the Apollo 9 mission displays what NASA calls an EVA (extravehicular activity) or what we generally call a spacewalk. The astronaut pictured is Rusty Schweickart, who performed the first in-space test of the Portable Life Support System used by the Apollo astronauts who walked on the Moon.
That tiny silver speck in the center of the frame is the LM from Apollo 16 -- the penultimate mission to land on the Moon and the first to land in the lunar highlands. Command module pilot Ken Mattingly, who had been scheduled to fly on Apollo 13 but was held back due to concerns about a potential illness, took the photo.
That tiny silver speck in the center of the frame is the LM from Apollo 16 -- the penultimate mission to land on the Moon and the first to land in the lunar highlands. Command module pilot Ken Mattingly, who had been scheduled to fly on Apollo 13 but was held back due to concerns about a potential illness, took the photo.
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