Hasselblad & the Moon Landing

Book excerpt: On 20 July 1969, as part of the Apollo 11 space program, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people ever to set foot on the Moon. Their iconic 'giant leap' was captured forever by the camera the astronauts carried with them: the Hasselblad 500EL. 'Hasselblad & the moon landing' looks at the history of the Apollo 11 mission through the lens of the Hasselblad and narrates the parallel tale of the challenge to create a camera that could work in space. While the Apollo 11 astronauts left their three cameras behind on the Moon, they brought back film magazines containing 1,400 photographs. The finest of these are shown alongside the mission timeline and transcripts of the conversations between the astronauts and Mission Control.