Description:

American Astronauts

Mercury, Gemini, Apollo Space Programs: Huge Archive of 1,550+ Annotated Images!

 

An enormous archive of 1,550+ NASA photo negatives, transparencies, and prints from the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo Space Programs, ca. 1962-1971. Most of the images are still stored in original NASA photo lab manila pouches annotated with a tracking number, mission info, participants' names, and date. Images are black and white as well as in color, the average size 5" x 4". With about 30 prints on glossy paper. In near fine condition.

 

An historic archive charting the progress of the NASA Space Program from its earliest Mercury missions to its moon-landing Apollo missions! A mixture of candid and staged photographs provide us with an incredibly intimate portrait of the everyday life of a 1960s American astronaut. The bulk of the collection (about 90%) depicts the Gemini Space Program, ca. 1964-1967. Photographs document Mercury-Atlas 7, 8, 9; Gemini 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12; and Apollo programs beginning with Apollo 4.

 

The photographs document the intensity and scope of the mid-twentieth-century American space program. Astronauts were photographed undergoing exhaustive medical testing both before and after space flights. They are seen participating in a barrage of training and simulations that tested their performance in zero-gravity chambers, centrifuges, Panamanian jungles, and Mexican deserts. Astronauts are captured learning how to take geological samples, use photography equipment, and operate complex machinery and vehicles.

 

Most of the photographs record the laborious process of preparing for flight: suiting up; insertion, where astronauts were strapped into narrow capsule seats; egress and recovery procedure, where the returning space capsule parachuted to earth, bobbed on the ocean's surface in a flotation collar, and astronauts evacuated via helicopter hoist onto a waiting air craft carrier. Photographs range from official individual and team portraits, to shots of crewmembers eating preflight breakfasts and waiting in White Room lounge chairs. Glorious photographs of lift-off, the Earth, and the lunar surface are also featured!

 

Astronauts featured in the archive include (in alphabetical order): Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Malcolm Scott Carpenter, Eugene Cernan, Michael Collins, "Pete" Conrad, Walter Cunningham, Richard F. Gordon, Gus Grissom, James Irwin, James Lovell,  James McDivitt,  Edgar Mitchell, Walter Schirra, David Scott, Alan B. Shepard, Thomas Stafford, "Deke" Slayton, Jack Swigert, Ed White, and John Young. Of these early astronauts, Grissom and White would perish in the 1967 Apollo 1 fire, and Armstrong and Aldrin would be the first to walk on the moon.

 

The Mercury Space Program (1959-1963) consisted of 6 missions, and its primary objective was to get the first American into space. The Gemini Space Program (1963-1966), conducted in 10 missions, improved space capsule design, extended the time astronauts spent in orbit, and perfected docking operations in space. The Apollo Space Program (1961-1972) consisted of 11 missions, and included the first successful lunar landing in July 1969.

 

A remarkable photographic archive documenting the Golden Age of Space Exploration !

 

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