Moon Landing 50th Anniversary and my 'Small Part' in The Story

[pentaxpete]

Hey All ! 50 years ago I was Photographer for the Geology Dept. University College London, Gower Street -- Boss let me order a Asahi Pentax S1A + Pentax Copy Stand + 50mm f4 Macro-Takumar with which I took loads of Fossils, Rocks, photos for Slide Lectures on Ferraniacolor etc etc but one day we were sent a Microscope Slide from NASA containing some of the Moon Dust which Neil Armstrong put into his pocket -- so 50 years later I did a Video about it which you can see here

 

[BAC1967]

Great story Pete, tanks for sharing. I wonder if the school still has that slide in its collection.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

What a story, Pete! Enjoyed it immensely! Thank you so much for posting it!

 

[Photo Engineer]

Very nice story to hear. Congratulations.

 

[Sirius Glass]

You made are very worthy contribution.

My contribution to the Lunar landing was just after I graduated and started work at Hughes Aircraft I watched the landing unfold on television. My contributions came later when I worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the Voyager I and II and Galileo. So I guess that almost makes up for sitting on my ass at the beach in Santa Monica while the lunar landing took place.

 

[Steve Roberts]

At the time of the first Moon landing at nine years old I had recently begun to get interested in mineral collecting. I wrote to NASA asking if they could spare a small piece of moon rock for my collection. They replied saying they didn't have any to spare but sent me a terrific pack of colour photos from the mission and all kinds of NASA publicity material.

Two or three years later a sample collected from the Moon made a tour of British museums. It was displayed under a plastic dome with all kinds of security measures in place. Fortunately, one of the members of the local mineral and mining club of which I was a member was also the natural history curator of Plymouth Museum. He arranged an evening when a group of us came in and were able to handle the specimen. Though there was a certain thrill in handling a piece of Moon rock, the sample itself was actually rather uninspiring. And no, I didn't get to scrape a piece off with my fingernail! Apparently the sample was accurately weighed before it was despatched from the US and would be as accurately weighed on its return!
Steve

 

[pentaxpete]

That is an interesting Story too, Steve !

 

[Valerie]

What a great story! Thanks for sharing with us.