On the 20th of July, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. 600 million people around the world watched as Neil Armstrong took mankind’s first steps onto the Lunar surface. This moment captured the excitement of a generation and fulfilled President Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. With such an historic event, the entire world would be excited to see what this new world looked like. Not only that, NASA knew that it had to have decent proof that they actually went to the Moon – otherwise the Russians could quite easily claim that the space race wasn’t over. But how did NASA broadcast live footage from the Moon all the way to a record amount of people back on Earth?

In the early 60’s, NASA began working on the rocket and spacecraft that would eventually take humans to the Moon. At the time, America had only sent a handful of astronauts into space, and no human had ever left Earth’s orbit. This ambitious plan to send humans to the Moon was met with a lot of skepticism and NASA knew that live video of the astronauts walking on the Moon would be crucial for the missions credibility. And so they knew that a live broadcast for the Moon would not only be great evidence of their achievement, but a way to capture the imagination of the entire world.

The Moon camera

NASA contracted electronics company ‘Westinghouse’ to design and manufacture a small black and white camera that would be capable of capturing man’s first step on the Moon. Camera’s at the time were naturally much bigger than what we are used to now – but designing a camera for the Moon would be even more difficult. This camera would need to operate on a mere 7 Watt power source and be able to survive the harsh radiation and extreme temperatures found on the Moon’s surface. On the lunar surface, the temperature differences are massive, ranging from around -130° C in the shade to around 20° C in the Sun. It would also need to be easy to use and extremely mobile, allowing the astronauts to move the camera with their bulky spacesuit gloves.

This is the now infamous camera that they came up with.

Sending the footage back to Earth

Most importantly, the Lunar Module would need to be able to send the live video feed all the way back to Earth, along with the other radio and telemetry data that was already being sent back. Although getting great footage of this historic event was important, the overall safety of the crew was the number one priority, and so lots of telemetry from the astronauts and the spacecraft was being sent back to NASA. But they only had a limited amount of bandwidth.

And so, NASA realized that the Apollo missions would require a brand new communications system in order to send data back from the Moon. They developed a system called “Unified S-band” which could send: telemetry, command, voice and television data using different frequencies but combined into a single antenna.

However, even with this new system, there wasn’t enough bandwidth available for a standard 525 line video camera. In order for the video feed to fit into the downlink, Westinghouse developed a slow-scan camera which transmitted just 325 scan lines at a mere 10 frames per second. This camera would be connected to the Lunar Module via an electrical cable, allowing it to be moved around the landing site.

The video signal would be transmitted from the Lunar Module’s antenna back to a tracking station in Australia where NASA would convert the image into a standard broadcast signal. The tracking station was part of the Deep Space Network, which has antennae all around the world to help us communicate with satellites in orbit and deep space. Most notably, this is used to talk to the two Voyager space probes, the most distant man-made objects every launched.

Once the signal from the Moon reached Australia, it would then be transmitted up to a communications satellite and back down to mission control in Houston where they would broadcast it to the rest of the world. However the challenges of filming on the Moon didn’t stop there.

The incredibly high contrast between the Lunar surface and the darkness of space would make capturing a clear image on the Moon extremely difficult. To solve this problem, Westinghouse used a piece of classified technology which they had developed for the Department of Defense. They had developed a special low-light imaging tube which was used on jungle surveillance cameras during the Vietnam War. This could capture moving objects at low light levels without completely blurring the image.

As the first manned Apollo missions loomed ever closer, the camera was ready and it was on Apollo 9 where it would go through it’s first and only test. The camera was placed on the Lunar Module and the mission successfully tested the camera along with the communication system. The camera’s next task would be capturing man’s first step onto the Moon.

20th of July 1969, Apollo 11 touched down on the Moon. With the camera placed on the side of the Lunar Module aiming towards the ladders, Buzz Aldrin hit a circuit breaker from inside the cabin to turn on the camera. At the start of the broadcast, the footage appeared to be upside down.

Video operators in Australia who were handling the signal quickly inverted the image to fix this issue, just in time for Neil stepping onto the Moon. There was a great deal of contrast in the image and a lot of detail was lost through the conversion process, but the footage clearly captured one of the most historic moments in history. Looking back, it didn’t seem to matter how good the quality was. The tension in Armstrong’s radio messages painted a strong enough image of this incredible moment. The camera performed its job perfectly throughout the mission and remains on the Moon to this day.

Future Apollo missions

Future Apollo missions used a more advanced version of the camera which filmed in color and had better low light performance. On Apollo 15, 16 and 17, cameras were also placed onto the Lunar rover. Once the Astronauts were leaving the Moon, they parked the rover at a distance and a camera operator back at mission control would command the camera to tilt up, following the astronauts as they left the Moon’s surface. Because of the delay in communications to the Moon, the operator had to command the camera to move up several seconds early. This shot didn’t go so well until the final mission, Apollo 17 when the camera captured a fantastic shot of the Lunar Module shooting off from the Lunar surface.

So although we have never been back to the Moon, we can appreciate the effort that went into capturing these historical moments in a way that we will cherish forever. And when we do eventually return to the Moon, the advanced camera technology that we have today will allow us to capture the moment with even more beauty.