Rare Apollo 11 photograph of Neil Armstrong on the Moon goes on auction

In reality, it had never been the plan that Mr Armstrong would pass the 70mm Hasselblad camera over to his colleague. In fact, the flight plan followed by the astronauts dictated that Mr Armstrong leave the camera on the MESA, for Mr Aldrin to collect when ready.

Mr Aldrin did indeed pick up the camera where it had been left for him, and took 48 pictures during the lunar EVA — there are images 5876-5900; 5904-5926 on Magazine S (40).

Regardless, the miscommunication meant that — for some two decades — NASA thought that there were no direct, 70mm, still photographs taken of the first man to walk on the Moon. Accordingly, their publicity team released, instead, the famous photograph taken by Mr Armstrong in which his reflection can be seen in the visor of Mr Aldrin’s spacesuit.

(As Bonham’s specialist Adam Stackhouse explains, there are 16mm images of Mr Armstrong on the lunar surface, although these were extracted from video footage taken by the Maurer automatic data acquisition camera on the Eagle module.)

READ MORE: NASA’s Artemis 1 finally lifts off on Moon mission finally blasts off

Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1700464/apollo-11-neil-armstrong-nasa-photo-moon-landing-eva-auction-bonhams