moon shot

test unit of the first telescope on the moon – including a film cartridge

Toronto. The year my first child was born, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. It was an exciting time for all. And photography proved its worth by capturing space images on the moon, not earth.

Years earlier, I learnt in school that the biggest challenge we faced to reach the moon and planets was to get enough speed/power to break free of earth’s gravity and atmosphere.

My good friend, George Dunbar, in his pursuit of photographic history came across this telescope used to film images from a base on the moon.

George writes, “The first telescope used on another world was the lunar surface camera designed by George Carruthers of the Naval Research Laboratory, one of the few African American scientists to work on Apollo. The Smithsonian has a qualification test unit with the actual film cartridge brought back from the Moon.”

Appropriate music for this post would be Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata – one of the first classical pieces I ever heard. It is played here by Kassia.

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