# Apollo 17 blasting back into Lunar Orbit **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 20, 2015, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-17-blasting-back-into-lunar-orbit/710358 "2015-01-20T04:35:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![chacoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-17-blasting-back-into-lunar-orbit/710358/1 "2015-01-20T04:35:21Z")
How did they film this? How did they get the images back to Earth? [It’s this clip here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obd_jTO66-0) This is not some conspiracy theory thing; those of you who think the whole thing was staged can go pound sand. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-17-blasting-back-into-lunar-orbit/710358/2 "2015-01-20T04:43:12Z")
> **[How NASA Captured This Iconic Footage Of Apollo 17 Leaving The Moon](https://gizmodo.com/how-nasa-captured-this-iconic-footage-of-apollo-17-leav-1671650186)** > > When Apollo 17 lifted off from the moon 42 years ago this week, a camera captured the movements of the spacecraft — even though nobody was left behind to, say, establish a lunar base. How was that possible? ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-17-blasting-back-into-lunar-orbit/710358/3 "2015-01-20T04:52:32Z")
According to the Smithsonian, [the pan was pre-programmed.](http://blog.nasm.si.edu/history/leaving-the-moon-watching-at-home/) It didn’t work the first few times, either. And as far as how they got the images back: TV broadcast, the same way that the first steps on the moon were broadcast live. I can’t find a definitive cite, but they were probably beamed back via the [Deep Space Network](http://blog.nasm.si.edu/history/leaving-the-moon-watching-at-home/), as portrayed in the rather charming movie [_The Dish._](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dish) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-17-blasting-back-into-lunar-orbit/710358/4 "2015-01-20T04:55:56Z")
I’m mostly quoting myself from a previous discussion on this after I saw hundreds of minutes of video and photos from NASA. Ed Fendell got to control the TV camera for most of the missions. [http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/a15.lrvload.html](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/a15.lrvload.html) > [@](#): > > 121:03:04 Scott: Okay; she’s all yours. > > ``` > [The TV is controlled from Houston by Ed Fendell who, from March 1969 to June 1984, was Head of the Communications Systems Section, Flight Control Division at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Fendell received a number of achievement awards for his Apollo work and, in 1973, was awarded Germany's HÖRZU Golden Camera Award (photo courtesy Ed Fendell / Harald Kucharek).] > > [Journal Contributor Harald Kucharek writes "HÖRZU (hör zu = listen to) is one of the oldest and largest German TV schedule magazines. (Equivalent to the U.S.'s TV Guide.) It started in the radio age; and that's where the name comes from. It is normally written in all caps. The award is a media/movie award, like an Oscar or Emmy."] > > [The remotely-controlled camera allows Mission Control to follow crew activities or examine the countryside while the astronauts are otherwise occupied. Journal Contributor Ken Glover has extracted a RealVideo clip from the NASA film 'In the Mountains of the Moon' which shows Fendell operating the Rover TV during the Station 2 activities.] > > [Scott - "This was another very effective system; and Fendell did an outstanding job, especially on this first mission (with a remotely controlled camera). Tracking our movements with a three second delay was not easy!"] > > ``` The explanation for his success is similar to what happened to me with digital cameras: my camera had the annoying “feature” of selecting flash and focus automatically, the process takes 1 to 2 seconds, many photos I took were missing people or I moved when the photo was not taken yet. The solution was to adapt myself to that and quickly count to three to get the picture at the right moment. Many times I calculated ahead of time by pressing the button and then, after a few seconds, the camera flashed with the results I expected. It took me a few months to get used to it. Fendell did basically the same, after the true lag time was known. He did go from the static Apollo 15 shot to do a good but missing a lot effort on Apollo 16, and then he got it right on Apollo 17. Because only a few Apollo missions had the rover video camera, a liftoff was captured properly by Fendell only in the last Apollo mission and after having lots of previous practice and more programming. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-17-blasting-back-into-lunar-orbit/710358/5 "2015-01-20T05:10:08Z")
If you read closely, it wasn’t exactly ‘pre-programmed’. They made all the calculations ahead of time, and the camera tilt didn’t work on 15 and the Rover was too close to the LM on 16. But on 17 the guy in Mission Control still essentially worked the tilt/zoom sliders by hand, in real time, by looking at the mission clock, not the TV screen (three second delay from the Moon). IOW he didn’t just press one button to execute a pre-programmed tilt/zoom. This was explicitly pointed out in the final episode of the HBO series _From the Earth to the Moon_…