In the mid year of 1962, Walter Schirra — who might before long become America's third man to circle the Earth — strolled into a Houston photograph supply shop searching for a camera he could take into space.

He turned out with a Hasselblad 500C, a top of the line Swedish import that had been prescribed to him by picture takers from Life and National Geographic.

Astronaut Walter Schirra, center, checks out his spacecraft's camera equipment with Paul Becker of McDonnell, left, and Roland Williams of RCA.

Schirra's was a considerably more complex — and expensive — decision than the straightforward Ansco Autoset that John Glenn purchased for $40 at a Cocoa Beach, Florida, sedate store. Glenn utilized it to take pictures from circle on Friendship 7 in February 1962. The Hasselblad retailed for about $500 and utilized an a lot bigger negative than Glenn's 35 mm camera. It additionally brandished compatible, Carl Zeiss focal points and removable film magazines.

Astronaut Alan L. Bean holds a container filled with lunar soil collected during the extravehicular activity in which astronauts Charles Conrad Jr., commander, and Bean, lunar module pilot, participated.

At the point when NASA got a look at Schirra's Hasselblad, they enjoyed what they saw. The space office obtained t one more. Specialists attacked the off-the-rack buyer model to make it space-commendable. They stripped it down to spare weight and painted it dull dark to diminish reflections. read more