# @nasaartemis on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/BjqPq80gGSb
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/15343809-nasaartemis-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/448ff59819.jpg
- **Posted:** 2018-06-05T22:40:05.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** NASA Artemis (@nasaartemis) — https://gondola.cc/nasaartemis

## Caption

NASA's "melted camera" has become a social media thing. As with many photos that spread like wildfire on the Internet, only part of the camera's story has been exposed so far. Here is the rest of it. NASA photographer Bill Ingalls (ingallsimages) has been shooting for the agency for 30 years. His creativity and efforts to get unique images are well known within the agency and to those who follow it — you’ll see his name in the credit of many photos we post on explorenasa. He knows where to set up his cameras to get some of the best NASA shots there are. This launch, of the NASA/German GRACE-FO from Vandenberg Air Force Base on May 22, 2018, had other plans for one of his cameras. "I had six remotes, two outside the launch pad safety perimeter and four inside," said Ingalls. "Unfortunately, the launch started a grass fire that toasted one of the cameras outside the perimeter." The location and vegetation can be seen in the set-up picture (slide 2.) Once the fire reached the camera, it was quickly engulfed. The body started to melt. When Ingalls returned to the site, firefighters were waiting to greet him. Recognizing the camera was destroyed, Ingalls forced open the body to see if its memory card could be salvaged. It could, which is how we can see the fire approaching the camera.

Ironically, the four cameras set up inside the perimeter were undamaged, as was the other remote. The damaged camera was one of the farthest from the pad, a quarter of a mile away.

The "toasty" camera (frame 1), as Ingalls calls it, is likely headed for display somewhere at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Meanwhile, Ingalls himself was just in Kazakhstan photographing the June 3 landing of the International Space Station's (iss) Expedition 55 crew — what materialized as a completely normal assignment. More on that on NASA.gov! 
Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

#nasa #meltedcamera #gracefo #launch #vandenberg #onthejob #photographerslife #billingalls #insidenasa #melted #camera ... the #memorycard #survived!

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- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 12,110
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## Tags

meltedcamera, nasa, billingalls, launch, vandenberg, photographerslife, onthejob, memorycard, insidenasa, gracefo, camera, survived, melted

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