Apollo 16 SIM Bay Camera 245mm Direct Negative

15 responses to “Apollo 16 SIM Bay Camera 245mm Direct Negative”

1. 

   jurvetson

   Sep 2, 2011 at 4:33 pm

   The folks at the end of the hall are looking at this example image from the Pan Cam, circling the moon while Young and Duke were exploring down below:Metal Canister: Direct Negative, Rectified, Frames 4870 – 4914, with side label 875269
   In his wonderful book, A Man on the Moon, Andrew Chaiken captures the excitement of Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly as he finally gets his exposure to space, in the spacewalk out to the side of the Service Module to unload this film roll: (pp.491-2)Oh, the extreme joy of analog film, in this case the artifact of its recovery.

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2. 

   Jeffrey Wallace

   Sep 2, 2011 at 5:14 pm

   That is Awesome!

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3. 

   Astrocatou

   Sep 2, 2011 at 5:54 pm

   That is pretty amazing..

   Some info on the camera
   history.nasa.gov/afj/simbaycam/fairchild-lunar-mapping-ca…

   That company (Fairchild) also did the CCD camera’s for Hubble and a lot of NASA camera’s,spy planes and satellites..
   They also make top of the line astrophotography and industrial CCD camera’s…
   http://www.fairchildimaging.com/

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4. 

   solerena

   Sep 2, 2011 at 6:01 pm

   yep, Fairchild "started the dawn of the integrated circuit era". Intel took over thereafter:)
   http://www.fairchildsemi.com/company/history/#
   Walking the moon walk:D

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5. 

   flytrue2

   Sep 2, 2011 at 6:29 pm

   Very cool…When you consider IMAX film is 70 mm that’s really impressive. I think you may have been a little overly optimistic taking this down to the local Walgreens for prints.

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6. 

   sbove

   Sep 2, 2011 at 8:13 pm

   Err, does this mean your negative just picked up a coating of dust from your carpet?? Forgive me if I’m missing something.

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7. 

   ChrisRudge

   Sep 2, 2011 at 8:15 pm

   You guys get your hands on some really good stuff thats been stashed for years! Love that excerpt above.

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8. 

   Jim Rees

   Sep 2, 2011 at 10:11 pm

   The NASA history web page says the film is 5 inches wide. Is that the right camera?

   The laser rangefinder weighed 50 pounds and used a ruby laser. Now you can buy one on Amazon for $300 that fits in your hand.

   And I also want to know why you’re unrolling this on carpeting.

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9. 

   msamaclean ©

   Sep 3, 2011 at 12:34 am

   Nice to see you hard at work…;-P
   That’s something I’d love to have…I think I would wallpaper my office with the film strips! very cool.

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10. 

    jurvetson

    Sep 3, 2011 at 3:46 am

    [http://www.flickr.com/photos/83025347@N00] – had to take a look. Anyone have a 245mm spool I can use to roll through it? And yeah, it’s an enlarged negative, 245mm wide.

    Also, here is the region covered (yellow for Apollo 16, red for 15, blue for 17):
    

    
    and an artistic rendering of a retrieval.

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11. 

    unwiredadventures

    Sep 5, 2011 at 12:06 am

    Thank you for sharing this!

    Reply
12. 

    jurvetson

    Sep 7, 2011 at 10:27 pm

    and a couple photos of the retrieval from Apollo 17

    

    

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13. 

    Astrocatou

    Sep 8, 2011 at 1:20 am

    That remains a remarkable story…and one that I had forgotten.
    Why was NASA so keen on these images, I wonder…?

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14. 

    jurvetson

    Aug 7, 2012 at 5:44 pm

    I just learned that my partner Mohanjit Jolly worked on this SIMBAY camera while at Itek. Small world indeed!

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15. 

    jurvetson

    Jun 10, 2016 at 5:18 pm

    I just saw the Apollo Mapping Camera at NASM:

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