Pictures from the Moon

Pictures from the Moon
www.gtc.org.uk
This is the story of how one of the greatest moments in
television came about – the transmission, 40 years ago,
of live pictures from the Moon. It was truly...
With thanks to NASA for all images unless specified
The Greatest Outside
Broadcast Ever
by Clive North
22 Autumn 2008 ZERB Pete Conrad with the Apollo 12 Unified S-Band Antenna

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Pictures from the Moon
Most people, when they think of the
Apollo 11 Moon landings and man’s
first steps onto the lunar surface, will
recall the names of Neil Armstrong
and Buzz Aldrin, and Neil’s famous
statement, “One small step for a man,
one giant leap for mankind.”
Those steps took place nearly 40 years
ago now, on 20 July 1969, and ever
since then we have had ingrained
on our memories those amazing first
moving pictures from another planet
– Neil and Buzz’s first steps down
the ladder onto the dusty surface of
the Moon. But there are two other
names which GTC members may not
know whose work is almost as closely
connected to those events as that of
the first astronauts to walk on the
Moon – those of Sam Russell and
Ed Fendell.
Sam was responsible for overseeing
the design and construction of the
video cameras that went to the Moon,
along with the means of getting
their pictures back to the waiting
billions of viewers on Earth. Ed was
the man whose hands were on the
controls in Houston guiding the
cameras remotely to send back those
unforgettable images.
Sam, now 75, but still working in his
own video production company, lives
in West Trenton, New Jersey and
Ed, now retired, also 75, lives close
to his former employer, NASA, at
Houston, Texas.
Not long after the launch on 4
October 1957 of the world’s first
spaceflight, the Russian Sputnik
satellite, Sam found himself on a
project with Airborne Instruments
Laboratory, Long Island, working in
aviation electronics and radar. This
soon led to a job with the Flight
Control Division of NASA working as
a flight controller on John Shepherd’s
Gemini III mission - the Americans’
first spacewalk.
Early Apollo cameras were designed
to produce a good B&W picture for
the harsh lunar conditions
Designing cameras for the Moon
Sam started designing cameras for
taking images from space with RCA
(Radio Corporation of America) in
1966. Television was not yet an
important part of the Apollo project,
hence the use of the so-called Unified
S-Bend System, a communications
system for transmitting messages
to the Moon and for receiving data
(biomedical and telemetry) and voice
communications. It only allowed
a very narrow bandwidth for a
television signal.
Sam with Lunar Rover camera replica
NASA budgeted only 500kHz for
television from the lunar surface,
much less than the 4.5MHz standard
used for commercial broadcast
television at the time. The NASA
mission planners called for a lunar
camera which could cope with this
limitation by using a non-standard
slow-scan format of 320 lines
resolution at 10 frames per second
(instead of the US TV standard of 525
lines at 30 fps).
A team at the Westinghouse
Defense and Space Center spent
five years developing a camera
that was capable of producing a
very good black and white picture
in the lunar environment with its
extreme temperatures and harsh
lighting conditions.
On Apollo 11, the first of the
missions to actually land on the
Moon, this black and white camera
was positioned on one of the lunar
module’s legs to give a view of the
astronauts taking their first steps
down the ladder.
Sam recalls, “When I finally saw the
television come on and there was
Neil Armstrong coming down the
ladder – I looked at the image and
thought ‘oh gosh, that’s really not a
good image’. It was black and white,
it was streaky, noisy and hard to see,
but thinking about it now I see that
perhaps the mistiness or ghostliness
of that image added a certain magical
quality to it.”
Scan-converted image
from Apollo 11
Convoluted route
Everyone saw those historic, indistinct
and noisy pictures of Neil Armstrong’s
first steps on the Moon but not many
realised that the signal quality had
been badly degraded en route from
Australia to the Unites States rather
than on its way from the Moon to
Earth. Apollo 11’s historic landing on
the Moon came when much of the
United States was in darkness and
the signal from the lunar module
could only be received at two remote
tracking stations – at Honeysuckle
Creek and a radio observatory at
Parkes, both in Australia.
The routing of the signals from the
Honeysuckle Creek 85-foot dish
station was via the ground lines of
the Australian Postal Department to a
COMSAT ground station, then to the
Intelsat IV satellite over the Pacific
back to COMSAT in California, and
then via AT&T to Houston where it
was converted to NTSC and released
to the TV network pool.
This real-time scan-converted TV
was recorded on commercial video
recorders at the Honeysuckle Creek
and Goldstone tracking stations, at
the Sydney Video switching centre,
as backup, and also at Houston on
quad videotape and 16mm film.
(Later it was found that a receiver
at one particular station could cause
picture tearing: a particular model
of processing amplifier could convert
a slightly noisy received signal into
a very objectionable streaky and
noisy image. In addition, some of the
electronic filters used could cause
ringing or ghosting in the image
– all potential glitches which were
subsequently fixed.)
www.honeysucklecreek.net
The worldwide TV audience saw these
real-time, scan-converted images
but it wasn’t until years later that it
was realised how much better the
TV pictures would be if the original
telemetry tapes could be found and
the slow-scan digitally converted
to NTSC or PAL. The demodulated
slow-scan TV, along with the other
data, (voice, space suit parameters,
etc) had all been recorded on 14-
track analogue data recorders at the
tracking stations on 14” diameter
reels of 1” wide telemetry tape. Those
tapes were an amazing 9200 feet
long, ran at 120ips requiring changing
every 15 minutes.
This realisation came about late
in 2003 when Australian Apollo
enthusiast Colin Mackellar saw
Polaroid pictures taken of the
Honeysuckle Creek tracking station
monitors during the transmission
and, in 2004, started asking questions
about the telemetry tapes containing
the slow-scan TV signals.
In mid-2005, some Super 8 footage
emerged which underlined the
difference in quality of the pictures
seen on the Australian monitors
compared with the broadcast pictures.
The informal search for the tapes
was stepped up and by August 2006
NASA had given their support for
searching their vast archives. As yet,
the tapes have still to emerge - but
when they do those images could be
sensational…
At the beginning of the American
space programme the importance of
television had been underestimated
but it was not long before there was
sustained pressure on NASA to enable
the public to watch the flights in
real time. There were also continual
efforts to upgrade the quality of the
television coverage. As a result, Apollo
12 had on board an extraordinary
colour video camera.
Colour wheel
BERT SOLTOFF
Autumn 2008 ZERB 23

Pictures from the Moon
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Creating a colour image
Within that camera, from RCA, was
a monochrome sensor coupled to a
precision machined gear wheel with
six cutouts in which three pairs of red,
green, and blue colour filters were
mounted. The filters were shaped so
that they would evenly expose the
sensor during each of the wheel’s
10 revolutions per second, locked to
the field scanning rate. Successive TV
fields recorded images of red, then
green, then blue components. Back
on Earth, a scan converter stored the
fields on analogue disk drives and
from them, generated NTSC video.
All this allowed a simple and reliable
camera design. At the time of the
Apollo missions, CCDs were hardly
more than laboratory curios and the
prospect of shrinking a three-tube,
broadcast quality camera to shoebox
size and keeping it in registration
throughout the trans-lunar voyage
was unthinkable. The field sequential
system offered excellent colour quality
and the only risky part was keeping
the filter wheel rotating in the vacuum
of space.
Ironically, on the GCTA (groundcommanded
television assembly)
camera’s first trip, Apollo 12, astronaut
Alan Bean inadvertedly pointed the
camera directly towards the intense
light of the Sun and burned out the
image sensor. As a result, there was
no television coverage other than the
very beginnings of that mission.
Failed Apollo 12 camera
Following this, RCA developed the
Silicon Intensifier Target tube which
had just the characteristics NASA
needed for the mission. It was
highly sensitive, so could see into
deeply shadowed areas, yet it could
withstand direct exposure to the
Sun without being damaged. It had
low lag, or image carryover, from
field to field, and its sensitivity was
controllable over a 1000:1 range.
Lunar Rover with camera and S-Band antenna
Extreme environment for a
camera
There were enormous challenges in
producing a good TV picture on the
Moon. Although we see the lunar
surface as grey, it is in fact very dark
grey to almost black in colour. The
astronauts of course have to wear
bright, white spacesuits to reflect
solar energy. “So you have a scene
which is truly black and white, and
the need is for the camera to render
an image that does justice to both the
astronauts and the environment they
are working in. We need to see clearly
what the astronaut is doing and also
what he is working with – that was
one of the big challenges,” says Sam.
There were other challenges to
overcome too – the camera had
mechanical moving parts that had
to work, both in a vacuum and in
the Moon’s one-sixth gravity. Lunar
dust could also get into the camera’s
gearing. In addition, there was the
problem of temperature control –
where the Sun was beating down on
the camera the temperature would
be around 101°C (214°F) but as soon
as the camera went into shade the
temperature would plummet to
-184°C (-300°F). There was no air
circulating around the camera of
course to cool it, so a lot of work
went into its thermal design.
RCA were following the specifications
provided by NASA for the camera but
Sam felt that workshop testing was
insufficient and that they needed to
create a ‘lunar scene’ with a very dark
surface with white-suited astronauts
to test the camera more realistically
– so they set up a model lunar surface
complete with toy astronauts.
At this time there was only six
months to go before Apollo 15, and
RCA was under pressure to get the
camera working correctly. The Apollo
14 flight took place halfway through
the development of the new camera
with its Silicon Intensifier Target
tube. There had been difficulties with
the ‘14’ camera – a SEC (secondary
emission conduction) vidicon Sam
recalls - which could expose for the
lunar surface correctly but the white
spacesuits of the astronauts appeared
‘bloomy and blurred’. Changes were
made to the pickup tube technology
but the main approach was to prevent
damage to the tube by keeping the
camera from being pointed directly at
the Sun.
Features from the more advanced
studio cameras that RCA were
developing were also being
incorporated into the new design
and NASA changed the cameras’
specification accordingly. “It was like
being in a fishbowl,” recalls Sam.
“Everyone, NASA management and
RCA top management, were
watching us!”
Apollo 15 Lunar Rover camera
Testing, testing
Sam and his team also had a lot of
explaining to do to show that they
could get the new camera ready in
time for the Apollo 15 flight and their
‘model’ simulations were a successful
part of this – so much so that NASA
converted a large laboratory into a
simulated 20ft x 40ft lunar surface
for further tests. Sam remembers
mixing sand and soot to approximate
the lunar surface – a messy but
essential job – and also helping with
simulations for the ground controllers
who would actually be remotely
operating the system. One big key
light approximated the light from
the Sun.
Environmental testing of the camera
was exhaustive and included both
24 Autumn 2008 ZERB

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Pictures from the Moon
thermal and dust tests. One big
problem was found and cured
– the camera’s spinning filter wheel
was found to seize up in cold
temperatures. If this happened on the
Moon the picture could be obscured
by the portion of the filter wheel
between the colour filters being stuck
in front of the sensor and remaining
that way for the rest of the mission.
Angenieux lens after
dust test
During final testing there were also
many queries about the quality of the
picture. “It needed to look as good as
the Saturday afternoon ballgame,”
recalled Sam “… and if it didn’t meet
that criterion, we were in trouble!”
Two factors helped improve the quality
of the television picture still further
on the later Apollo missions: first,
NASA’s Deep Space Network around
the world began to make use of new
210-foot dish stations which increased
the received signal strength by almost
8dB. Second, Image Transform, then a
startup company in North Hollywood,
demonstrated to NASA, using
Apollo 15 footage, their innovative
proprietary system for enhancing
video. NASA had them bring their
system online for Apollo 16, after
which converted video from all the
EVAs (extra vehicular activities) was
sent to California, enhanced, returned
to Houston, and then distributed to
the TV network pool - all in real time.
Sam’s particular responsibility as the
project engineer was that of pulling
all the pieces of the project together
- making sure that the camera met all
the requirements, that the astronauts
knew how to operate it, the ground
controllers knew how it worked and
that it mounted properly on both the
lunar module and the lunar rover.
Operating the camera
On the lunar rover, the camera was
designed to be operated by the
astronauts themselves. It boasted a
handle on its base with switches for
on–off and exposure mode, and there
were levers on the front of the camera
for adjusting iris and zoom. The
camera was also designed so that it
could be put onto a ‘television control
unit’ which would receive remote
commands from Mission Control who
could pan the camera from side to
side, tilt it up and down, and also
control exposure.
Having ‘dual control’ in this way also
caused some unexpected problems in
practice. If the camera was mounted
on the control unit and the astronaut
just wanted to quickly pan the camera,
it had to be turnable without wrecking
the gearing used for remote control.
So a clutch system was added to both
the pan and the tilt mechanisms that
allowed the camera to be quickly
moved by hand.
This seemingly perfect answer
actually caused a problem on Apollo
15 when it was found that the tilt
clutch got very hot, which reduced its
effectiveness so much that when the
camera was tilted up a little it would
flop backwards and end up pointing
straight up.
The tilt clutch could have proved a big
problem at the end of that mission
when it was planned that the camera
would televise the lift-off as the lunar
module lifted the astronauts back up
to lunar orbit. Mission Control decreed
that the camera should be locked off
horizontally rather than risk a tilt up,
just in case the camera flipped up
and become uncontrollable. Once the
astronauts had left, the camera was
needed for further science experiments
including the camera panning slowly
round and mapping the area.
One problem that did turn out worse
than expected on Apollo 15 was lunar
dust. Precautions against ingress
of dust into the camera and its
Angenieux 15–75mm lens had worked
fine – the problem was the dust that
was kicked up as the lunar rover
Apollo 16 Commander John Young enjoys one-sixth gravity
drove around. This settled on the lens
causing distracting speckles whenever
the camera pointed anywhere near
the Sun. The astronauts had to clean
the lens frequently with a brush. There
was also no sunshade on the camera
– an omission that would be corrected
on all subsequent flights.
Multiple camera positions
On the Apollo 15 flight the camera
was used in three very different ways.
After landing, the astronauts pulled a
lanyard which released a trapdoor on
the side of the lunar module exposing
the camera. This was pointed towards
the ladder to show the astronauts
climbing down onto the lunar surface.
Sam recalls: “We saw Dave Scott
climbing down … the picture was in
sharp focus and the rendering was
perfect … we saw the astronaut in
complete detail ... that really was a
moment of joy – we knew we had
it made and the worries were pretty
much over!”
The second camera position was to
cover the deployment of the lunar
rover which was to be unloaded from
the opposite side of the lunar module.
The camera had to be set up on a
tripod on the lunar surface and linked
by cable back to the spacecraft. An
umbrella-shaped high-gain antenna
was fixed to the lunar rover for direct
transmission of pictures back to Earth,
via a communications unit which
handled both the TV signals and the
astronauts’ communications.
The ability to remotely-control the
camera was invaluable – it meant that
the astronauts could move away, carry
out their experiments and explore
while the camera followed their
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Pictures from the Moon
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Apollo 15 ascent - slow-scan still frame
every move. TV pictures couldn’t be
transmitted while the lunar rover was
travelling though – the directional
antenna was not designed to
automatically orientate itself towards
Earth so this had to be done manually
each time the vehicle stopped.
Ironically, given the fact that this
was the first time astronauts were to
venture far away from their spacecraft
and that there would be live colour
TV coverage for the first time, the
three American TV networks had only
planned sporadic coverage. When they
saw the feed of the Apollo 15 pictures
though, with their detailed views of
the explorations, they dropped their
regular programming and devoted
their airtime to the live coverage.
Go several seconds before ‘Action’!
Controlling the camera on the Moon
from back on Earth proved more than
a little tricky - quite simply because
it was so far away and the various
stages in the radio signal’s path
added a delay of around six and a
half seconds. Also, the camera remote
controls were quite crude. The flight
controller had just a set of buttons
with which he could command the
camera to pan left or right, tilt up or
down, or zoom in or out. Each move
also had to be followed by a ‘stop’
command. “They were just punchbutton
commands and they were
really not very elegant!” recalls Sam.
The result was that the flight
controller in Houston had to be
constantly thinking and planning
ahead as each camera move had the
time delay to compensate for. He
would have to give his commands well
in advance – luckily the fixed speed
pan was quite slow.
Chief Camera Controller was Ed
Fendell who found that, as well as
the radio delay, it was very difficult
to predict what an astronaut might
do next – whether he would move
left or right for instance. The chances
were, however, that he would either
move out of frame, or if Ed took a
guess and panned, it would be in the
wrong direction. The solution was
to zoom out at the first sign of an
astronaut making a definite move and
then tighten in again when the move
finished. Fairly standard stuff on Earth
but not so easy when separated by
240,000 miles and a six and a half
second command delay!
Ed Fendell with gold camera award
Ed remembers: “This way of operating
was so intense and tiring. It was
very different doing it for real rather
than simulating it at Cape Canaveral.
It wasn’t helped by the adrenaline
pumping and the thought that there
were 9 billion people looking over
your shoulder!”
At the first lunar worksite he was
no doubt relieved to see the remote
control system operate successfully
delivering a wide-angle pan of the
lunar surface. “I remember thinking
this really is the Moon! It’s not like
looking at some simulation at Cape
Canaveral - this is for real! … When I
started to look at the astronauts later
on and at the colours of the emblems
on their suits and the fact that they
were moving I can only guess what
my blood pressure went to! It was
extremely exciting but there really
wasn’t time to do anything but keep
on working.”
“When the crew came to a stop on the
lunar rover, they adjusted the antenna
to point to Earth and said the camera’s
‘all yours’. It was, er… a little tricky
and kind of sweaty!” jokes Ed.
As well as receiving requests for
camera moves from the scientists and
engineers in Mission Control, Ed also
had communications direct from the
astronauts asking what he was looking
at with the camera and how it was all
going. At each stop on the lunar rover
trips there was a requirement for a
360° pan of the area for the geology
team. This was taken in 3° increments,
then the camera had to find and
observe the astronauts again.
“You have to understand we were
not television, or camera, people. We
were assigned to this job and we went
off to do it, but as soon as the press
got word of what we were doing the
media descended on us for interviews
and the next thing I knew was my
name was known around the world
- and I was just a flight controller at
NASA!” said Ed.
Apollo 15 had been the first time the
camera had gone mobile with the
lunar rover. A lot of pre-planning had
been done with both the Earthbound
geologists and the astronauts on
the best way to televise the various
planned stops on Dave Scott and
Jim Irwin’s lunar surface excursions.
NASA’s public relations people and the
flight director also had requests for
particular coverage from the camera
and these had been rehearsed as well
as they could be on Earth. In the end
the coverage was so gripping that all
the American channels showed the
live coverage from start to finish.
Capturing the lift-off
Extraordinary though it may seem
now, when Apollo 16 came around the
gloss seemed to have worn off as far
as the American viewing public was
concerned. The networks only showed
portions of the coverage but in Europe,
at least, the non-commercial channels
cleared the schedules for it.
All this came to a head when it was
planned to show the blast-off of the
ascent stage of the lunar module
from the Moon’s surface. On Apollo
15 there had been the problem with
the clutch on the pan and tilt head
meaning the camera had remained
static with the spacecraft rapidly
exiting the top of frame. For Apollo
16, the tilt clutch problem had been
solved and Ed Fendell asked RCA to
establish how the ascent stage should
be followed and at what point the
remote command should be given for
the camera to tilt upwards following
the ascending spacecraft.
Buzz Aldrin - pictured
by Neil Armstrong
Sam had done the calculations
but there was another, unforeseen,
problem. The astronauts had placed
the lunar rover, with the camera,
much too close to the lunar module
so when the ascent took place the
spacecraft still shot straight up out of
frame and there was still no chance of
following it.
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Pictures from the Moon
By the time of Apollo 17 – the final
mission – the flight controllers had
got it just right. By looking at the size
of the image of the lunar rover on the
TV screen they were able to work out
just how far away the lunar module
was from the now remotely
positioned camera.
“What I was watching to get those
pictures was a sheet of paper,” said
Ed. “The camera commands started
going out pre lift-off as the crew was
counting down. We had to get the
camera moving well before the lunar
module lifted off”.
After the calculations had been done
and applied, the camera zoomed
back and tilted up exactly as the
lunar module took off. In fact, Ed had
commanded the camera to move a full
eight seconds before the ‘Fire’ button
was pushed in the lunar module.
The camera carried on tilting up and
zooming after the retreating ascent
stage, following it as it went up and
pitched over, establishing the velocity
that it needed to go into lunar orbit.
The spectacular shot carried on and on
until the spacecraft was just a speck
of light fading from the screen.
After his unique spells of camera
operating, Ed took a trip to Germany
to receive a golden miniature model
camera which was presented to
him, by a German TV magazine,
as a memento of his work with the
Apollo project.
Sam comments: “I think it’s hard to
understand the challenges we had in
doing the camerawork on Apollo. You
have to remember the time was 1970.
At the time integrated circuits hardly
existed and there were next to none
on the cameras. We used a very crude
colour system, a colour wheel in front
of basically a black and white camera
but it was a system that worked - and
that was the important thing.”
It was a personal disappointment
for both Sam and Ed that the space
programme ended early after Apollo
17 – as it no doubt was for many of
the other 400,000 people who had
been employed around the US on the
Apollo project. Originally planned to
go on to Apollo 20, it was felt that
the public had had enough of space
flight – to the Moon anyway – and the
remaining Saturn V rockets,
lunar modules and lunar
rovers went to museums
and into storage.
Sam summed it all up:
“After Apollo 17 it was
never the same again
– there was something
missing, that sense of
exploration, of pushing the frontier,
the feeling of really being in the
blue sky arena - it was all gone. We
stepped back and we did the space
station and all of those things, but I
think that the goal of getting to the
Moon, exploring and bringing the
men back was just an extraordinary
venture. I’ll never forget it.”
Fact File
Moon Machines interview with Sam Russell
But it was still the greatest OB ever!
My thanks to Sam and Ed for their
cooperation in the preparation of
this article, which came about as a
result of interviews I filmed with them
for a Discovery Science HD series
Moon Machines, produced by Dox
Productions (Clive North).
Clive North is a UK-based freelance lighting cameraman. His documentary
feature for Dox Productions ‘In the Shadow of the Moon’ was recently shown
on Channel 4 following its cinema release in the US, UK, NZ and Australia.
Website: www.clivenorth.co.uk
Mobile: 07831 879594
Sam Russell: www.russelland.com
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