No doubt some of you have already seen some of the incredible photos that the Integrity crew took on their lunar fly-by. I knew they were using Nikon DSLR cameras, I knew that they had D5 and Z9 cameras, and I didn’t give it much more thought. What I didn’t know was that the D5s were the primary cameras for this mission, and that they’re nine years old. This article gives a good overview: https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/...lr-as-its-primary-artemis-ii-camera-heres-why For the TL;DR among us: noise at high ISO. A lower resolution across a large sensor produces less noise at the high ISO ranges needed for the challenging task of photography in space - the D5 beats the newer D6 in this regard. Plus the fact that the D5 is already a known quantity for NASA, it’s already been well proven for use in space. I’ve been following the progress of this mission pretty closely, and I found it interesting to learn more about the demands that the environment & conditions puts on the equipment used. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend checking out some of the photos that have been sent back so far: https://images.nasa.gov/. If I recall correctly, the relatively short lunar fly-by generated some 170-ish gigabytes of image data, much of which has already been down-linked. The Hasselblad photos from the Apollo missions are still incredible to this day, and back then you’d have had to wait days or weeks to see a crappy reproduction in a newspaper. Wind forward 50 years, and we can now get raw high-resolution images downloaded more or less instantly from a spacecraft that’s a quarter of a million miles away. I really really hope the Artemis programme stays on track, because they’re targeting a lunar landing for 2028. And now I need to shut up and get back to work, or I’ll be here all day gushing about it!
TIL - Artemis II has cameras at the ends of all 4 solar arrays. This guy has synced & stitched them together:- https://bsky.app/profile/stim3on.bsky.social/post/3miz2idnhz22z
Modified GoPro cameras, no less. The crew have also been using GoPros on board. I’m pretty sure all of them are also relatively old models. Neat! I’m sure I saw footage of the core stage separation taken from the POV of the interim cryogenic propulsion stage’s main engine… I’ll have to look that up, because it was cool as hell.
Absolutely fantastic isn't it, as ever space electronics don't have to be the cutting edge, the known is far more preferred. The GoPro mods they do are extremely cool, basically gutted and put into hardened cases and left in odd spots (in-fuel-tank ones for SpaceX for example)
