I wouldn’t normally consider this photo to be “taken by an astronaut”. All he did was start the camera’s timer at T-minus 90 seconds, as part of his pre-launch checklist. But Alan R. Shepard Jr. is a personal hero of mine, and it’s my website, so I’m declaring that this is the very first astronaut photograph. Approximately.
The flight of Freedom 7, also known as mission Mercury-Redstone 3 (MR3), lasted 15½ minutes. An automatic camera took 156 photos; they are described only as “CLOUDS” in NASA’s Gateway database. Each row represents (very roughly) 1½ minutes.
The Mission
Freedom 7 was launched from Cape Canaveral, on the east coast of Florida.
This 1961 state-of-the-art graphic from the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) shows the capsule’s trajectory. NASA
Space “officially” starts 62 miles (100 km) above sea level. The diagram says the apogee was 125 miles but modern records show that Freedom 7 reached 116½ miles, which is almost twice the necessary altitude.
A Bolted-down 70mm Camera
Maurer model 220G, similar to this one. SMITHSONIAN On the right end is a mirror, where you can see the 75mm f/2.8 Finitar lens. That kept the camera body from blocking Shepard’s view through the porthole, and it resulted in the original photos being backwards. The big section on the left is a film magazine.
10:31:57 AM – Camera Timer Started (Frame 0)
It’s really a shame that somebody hand-wrote, in black ink, on this truly historic, original film. Every single frame. It’s as if somebody wrote on the famous photos of the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk. The photos are damaged in other ways, mostly dirt and scratching. Frames 104 and 153 have been torn and sloppily repaired with cellophane tape. Unfortunately many of the film-era NASA photos are in less-than-perfect condition.
Note that you can see the edges of the round porthole, which was facing east. Part of the capsule interior is in the sun so it is reflected in the window along the right in all of the east-facing photos.
In this closeup of the horizon you can clearly see a ship, a building, and even telephone poles.
The camera took 70mm Film: ANSCO Anscochrome T-100 Superior, ASA 100/64, color positive. Each frame is 2¾” x 2¾”.
These days the use of color-positive film isn’t as widely known as film using negatives, but it was common at NASA for many years. I love the idea that the film is sitting in a vault somewhere, and if you held it up to the light you’d see the photos just as they were was taken, like huge slides.
The scanned images are 20MP TIFF files.
So Frame 1 was taken at about the same moment as the famous liftoff photo, which appeared the next day (in black and white) in newspapers around the world. NASA
10:33:32 AM – Moments after Liftoff (Frame 1)
The differences between frames 0 and 1 show that the spacecraft was already rising. When the images are aligned using the edges of the film, the horizon stays still and everything in the foreground moves.
NASA’s records say that Freedom 7 lifted off 5 May 1961 at 9:34 AM Eastern Standard Time, without specifying any seconds.
The onboard clock in Frame 1 shows a Greenwich Mean Time of 02:33:32 PM. So if the onboard clock was accurate, the actual liftoff time was right around 9:33:30 AM.
There’s an obvious change between the second and third rows of photos, and the interior reflection goes away, which would correspond to the “attitude programming” shown in the diagram. Frame 31 (row 3 photo 4) is my best guess for the first astronaut photograph, but honestly that’s mostly because it shows more of the planet than the adjacent photos.
10:36:30 AM – What Shepard Saw at T+3 Minutes (Frame 31)
I did some basic restoration on this photo, but not a lot. It’s quite grainy, and there’s just not a lot there to restore. Here it is before brightness/contrast correction, as downloaded from NASA.
As you can see below, there are linear (mechanical) scratches, random scratches, dirt, a small hair, and what appear to be fingerprints along the whole right edge.
10:48:50 AM – Splashdown
I included Frame 154 because it’s a better photo. I don’t know what the white thing is. There are only 5 seconds difference between 154 and 155, which makes me wonder whether the final snapshot was triggered by the impact with the Atlantic instead of the timer.
The time between Frames 1 and 155 is 15:18. NASA’s records say the flight lasted 15:22 so Frame 1 was probably taken 3-4 seconds after liftoff.
US Navy Commander Shepard spent about 10 minutes bobbing in the sea before he was winched aboard a Sikorsky helicopter and flown to the nearest recovery ship, 60 miles away. The capsule was recovered by another ‘copter, along with 156 photos.
Less than ten years later, on 4 Feb 1971, Rear Admiral Shepard would spend over 9 hours — 36 times as long as the flight of Freedom 7 — walking on the surface of freakin’ moon.
Freedom 7’s permanent home is the spectacular Milestones of Flight Gallery at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, but it’s sometimes loaned to other museums. It is displayed without the windowless hatch; the capsule had only two small portholes.
P.S.
Mrs. Ex knew how I felt about Alan Shepard so after he died she searched for an autographed photo for my wall.
I swear, you can find anything on eBay. I’m not Ken, but my last name is Pearson.
