Thanks to modern technology, spacecrafts can now take epic selfless with comets and capture the breathtaking beauty of the Earth. But modern advancements in space photography has the Hasselblad to thank. It was the camera that started it all for space shutterbugs.
Organized by the RR Auction of Boston, the first professional camera used in space, the Hasselblad 500c, was just sold for an impressive $281,250 on November 3 during a one-lot live sale.
The Hasselblad's history is as following: Astronaut Walter "Wally" Schirra, a photography lover, took the camera with him during NASA's Mercury-Atlas 8 mission that orbited our planet back in 1962. Schirra made adjustments to the camera to make it ready for its journey to space, which included painting it all black to reduce reflections. He also added a 100-exposure film container to the camera.
While today, tools like Twitter and Google allow us to see images from the heavens above us, in the 1960s this was not a common luxury. NASA did not know what they had until Schirra showed them the first professional photos of the Earth taken from orbit.
The camera also traveled to space a year later with NASA's Mercury 7 astronauts, but this time with Gordon "Gordo" Cooper. Cooper traveled with the same 80-millimeter Zeiss lens and camera body used in the previous mission.
"It's something that is really tangible space history and it also gave a glimpse of space to the world and I am fascinated with that, "the new owner, who remains anonymous, says.
The winner of the Hasselblad, who works in the technology industry, began collecting space artifacts after a growing fascinating in engineering and science. The first camera to professionally take a picture from space joins his humble collection which includes Apollo artifacts.
Next time you Google pictures photo from space, think about what it would have been like for astronauts to see these images for the first time back then.
Photo Credit: CollectSpace
