Amateur Photographer – 20 July 2019

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Above: The crew

of Apollo 11 was

cordial, but not

especially close.

Buzz Aldrin (right)

expected to leave

the Lunar Module

(LM pronounced

‘Lem’) before Neil

Armstrong (left)

because Gemini

commanders had

stayed on board

while co-pilots

made spacewalks.

Historians still

debate why the

decision was made

for Armstrong to

exit Apollo’s LM first

activities in space should be devoted

to peaceful purposes for the benefit

of all mankind.’ In other words,

NASA had no military objectives.

In its initial years of existence,

NASA was busy working on two

overlapping programs: the X-15

rocket-powered hypersonic research

aircraft (which ran from 1959 to

1968) and Project Mercury (1958

to 1963). Mercury was previously

the US Air Force’s ‘Man in Space

Soonest’ program, which had the

original objective of getting a

person into Earth orbit as soon

as possible. When the Soviet

cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin completed

a single Earth orbit on 12 April 1961

it meant the US had, once again,

failed to be first to achieve a key

space exploration landmark.

Photographic policy at NASA

Since its 1958 inception NASA had

taken great care to document its

activities in terms of recording

scientific data, but in its first three

years of existence it had no clear

plan for photography.

Science journalist Piers Bizony –

who co-authored and edited the

new book The NASA Archives:

60 Years in Space – explains,

‘Actually there wasn’t [any plan for

photography]. It was the astronauts

who decided to take cameras into

space, and they are the ones

who chose to experiment with a

Hasselblad. NASA went on to value

the pictorial side of its astronaut

missions, but this was more of a

discovery than a deliberate plan.’

It wasn’t until 1961 that the future

direction of NASA – and its

subsequent photographic policy

• got more clarity, thanks to three
  key factors. First, James E Webb
  was appointed as Administrator
  of NASA in February 1961 – Webb
  was to prove an inspired choice.
  Second, in May 1961, US President
  John F Kennedy made a request to
  Congress to fund a program to
  land a US man on the moon