The 2013 Hasselblad Award, with a cash prize of EUR 105,000, will be announced on Thursday, March 7, on the company website. On October 25, 2013 an exhibition of the award winner’s work will open at the Foundations’ exhibition hall Hasselblad Center, at the Gothenburg Museum of Art. In honor of Hasselblad's legendary quality, and its long service to photography, I've been running a series of articles originally published in the Hasselblad House Magazine around the time of its 25th anniversary. Issue no. 3 of the 1970 volume recounts the gripping story of the Apollo XI mission and NASA’s first lunar landing: 

The most dramatic and sensational expedition in the history of mankind was successfully completed when Apollo XI touched down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969.

Radio listeners and TV viewers all over the world had followed the exciting flight from ignition of the mighty Saturn’s rocket engines at Cape Kennedy on July 16 to the moon landing itself on June 20 and splash-down in the Pacific.

Three space veterans were on board, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins. They had three Hasselblad 500EL’s, two equipped with a 80 mm Zeiss Planar lens and one with a 250mm Zeiss Sonnar. One of these cameras, two extra magazines and the latter lens were in the Apollo capsule throughout the flight. The other camera, also with two extra magazines, was in the lunar module along with a Hasselblad 500 EL Data Camera.

Everything worked perfectly after the successful launching, and on Monday, July 20, the lunar module with astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin on board, landed in the Sea of Tranquility on the moon.

After the moon landing, the two astronauts began their meticulous preparations with a checklist over several hundred items before Neil Armstrong could climb down and become the first man on the moon.

Twenty minutes later “Buzz” Aldrin joined his colleague and a period of intense work began. The astronauts set out scientific instruments, collected moon matter and took pictures during the two hours and twenty minutes they were on the moon surface. The cameraman was astronaut Neil Armstrong. The newly constructed silver colored Hasselblad 500EL Data Camera with an f.5.6/60 mm Zeiss Bigon lens fitted with a polarization filter was mounted on his chest (above left).

When the astronauts took off from the moon, they left all heavy equipment behind, and there were two Hasselblad camera bodies and lenses among the lunar module’s abandoned landing gear, the astronauts’ outer shoes, moon overalls etc. The exposed magazines were taken along in the lunar module.

The return journey to earth went strictly according to plan and the capsule landed in the Pacific south-west of Hawaii at dawn on July 24. The astronauts were taken aboard the waiting aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Hornet, which carried a special quarantine bus in which the astronauts would stay during their return to the NASA base in Houston. After a three-week long quarantine, doctors and scientists were able to pronounce the astronauts in top shape, and the exciting adventure had come to a happy ending.

Previous DART features include:
Hasselblad of Gothenburg
Hasselblad in America
Hasselblad in Space