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Apollo 12 and Surveyor III vintage photo signed by Guenter Wendts
450,00 €
Official glossy 8 x 10 and 10 x 8 NASA photos from the collection of longtime NASA pad leader Guenter Wendt.
RR16042016A290
EB03122018A80
RR16042016A290
EB03122018A80
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AS 12 18 7099, November 19, 1969
This is the first photograp of two american spacecraft on an alian world. Surveyor III, foreground, was lauched from Cape Kennedy on April 17, 1067, and made a soft landing in a plenty sloped crater on the Moons Ocean of Storms on April 19, 1967. In the back ground is the lunat module Intrepid which carried Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean down to the moon's surface nearby on November 19, 1969. To the right of the lunar module may be seen the inverted "umbrella" of an erectable S-band antenna
Günter F. Wendt
Günter F. Wendt (August 28, 1924 – May 3, 2010) was a German-born American mechanical engineer. A native of Berlin, Germany, Wendt studied mechanical engineering and then fought for Nazi Germany during World War II, serving as a flight engineer aboard Luftwaffe night fighters.
He was in charge of the spacecraft close-out crews at the launch pads for the entire Mercury and Gemini programs (1961–1966), and the manned phase of the Apollo program (1968–1975) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). His official title was Pad Leader.
In NASA documentary films, Wendt appears as the bespectacled, thin man in a bow-tie and white cap and coat, usually standing near the hatch, clipboard in hand; or bending over seated crew members, pulling their safety harnesses snug for launch.
He came to be regarded as a welcomed good luck figure to the astronauts; always the last reassuring earth-bound face the crew members saw, kidding with them and wishing them a successful flight as he directed completion of the complex pad close-out procedures just prior to launch.
Wendt's was the final word for the launch tower white room team responsible for loading and securing the crewmen, ensuring that spacecraft instrumentation, switches and controls were correct for launch, and securing the hatch. Nobody touched anything without his permission.