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What Happens When A Camera Gets Too Close To A Launch

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 23, 2018

Click below for the camera’s last picture

Reason for toasty remote camera, GRACE-FO, May 22, 2018. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

11 responses to “What Happens When A Camera Gets Too Close To A Launch”

  1. Sam S says:
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    Is that waxy stuff on the camera body melted plastic from the camera itself, or some sort of residue from the rocket launch?

    • DougSpace says:
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      It looks to me that there was a plastic bag over the camera. The body of the camera is unmelted. But the lens hood obviously melted.

    • Bob Mahoney says:
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      Maybe it’s paraffin wax that had been left in the engine piping…

    • hikingmike says:
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      Maybe something bubbled/boiled out of the camera itself.

  2. Jeff2Space says:
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    That’s one crispy camera. I guess you have to spend some serious money to get these amazing shots.

  3. Jack says:
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    Oops…. LOL

  4. Bob Mahoney says:
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    Hot Shots Part Trois.

  5. fcrary says:
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    I saw a similar story a few months ago. I can’t find it now, but does anyone know if this would be the same photographer? If so, he seems to be making a career out of consuming optics to get really impressive images.

    • motorhead9999 says:
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      If it’s what I’m thinking of, it was a different photographer. John Krauss had his camera set up, and the lens had either debris or rocket fuel get on it that ate the lens (I can’t remember which it was)

  6. Shaw_Bob says:
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    A bit of TLC and it’ll be fine.

  7. Dewey Vanderhoff says:
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    By the strangest of coincidences, when I first saw this set of images, I happened to be listening to a live version of Leonard Cohen and Joan Baez dueting on the anthem ” Joan of Arc”… where the Canon 5 camera sings to the Falcon 9 rocket ” If you are fire , I must be wood…”.

    It wasn’t the rocket exhaust that did this… it was the secondary brush
    fire the rocket ignited. Bill had cameras much closer to the Falcon
    than this one. In some perverse way this one was sacrificed for the cause.