The book is a collection of 300 photographs from NASA\u2019s Mercury and Gemini programs during the 1960s, in which Andy Saunders has meticulously restored the images and then deeply researched their background to more fully tell the stories behind them. The end result is a beautiful and powerful reminder of just how brave America\u2019s first pioneers in space were. What follows is a lightly edited conversation with Saunders about how he developed the book and some of his favorite stories from it.<\/p>\n
Ars<\/strong>: Why put out a book on Mercury and Gemini now?<\/em><\/p>\n Andy Saunders<\/strong>: Well, it\u2019s the 60th anniversaries of the Gemini missions, but the book is really the prequel to my first book, Apollo Remastered<\/em>. This is about the missions that came before. So it takes us right back to the very dawn of human space exploration, back to the very beginning, and this was always a project I was going to work on next. Because, as well as being obviously very important in spaceflight history, they\u2019re very important in terms of human history, the human evolution, even, you know, the first time we were able to escape Earth.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n For tens of thousands of years, civilizations have looked up and dreamt of leaving Earth and voyaging to the stars. And this golden era in the early 1960s is when that ancient dream finally became a reality. Also, of course, the first opportunity to look back at Earth and give us that unique perspective. But I think it\u2019s really the photographs specifically that will just forever symbolize and document at the beginning of our expansion out into the cosmos. You know, of course, we went to the Moon with Apollo. We\u2019ll go back with Artemis. We spent long periods on the International Space Station. We\u2019ll walk on Mars. We\u2019ll eventually become a multi-planetary species. But this is where it all began and how it all began.<\/p>\n Ars<\/strong>: They used modified Hasselblad cameras during Apollo to capture these amazing images. What types of cameras were used during Mercury and Gemini?<\/em><\/p>\n Saunders<\/strong>: Mercury was more basic cameras. So on the very first missions, NASA didn\u2019t want the astronaut to take a camera on board. The capsules were tiny. They were very busy. They\u2019re very short missions, obviously very groundbreaking missions. So, the first couple of missions, there was a camera out of the porthole window, just taking photographs automatically. But it was John Glenn on his mission (Mercury-Atlas 6) who said, \u201cNo, I want to take a camera. People want to know what it\u2019s going to be like to be an astronaut. They\u2019re going to want to look at Earth through the window. I\u2019m seeing things no humans ever seen before.\u201d So he literally saw a $40 camera in a drugstore on his way after a haircut at Cocoa Beach. He thought, \u201cThat\u2019s perfect.\u201d And he bought it himself, and then NASA adapted it. They put a pistol grip on to help him to use it. And with it, he took the first still photographs of Earth from space.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n So it was the early astronauts that kind of drove the desire to take cameras themselves, but they were quite basic. Wally Schirra (Mercury-Atlas 8) then took the first Hasselblad. He wanted medium format, better quality, but really, the photographs from Mercury aren\u2019t as stunning as Gemini. It\u2019s partly the windows and the way they took the photos, and they\u2019d had little experience. Also, preservation clearly wasn\u2019t high up on the agenda in Mercury, because the original film is evidently in a pretty bad state. The first American in space is an incredibly important moment in history. But every single frame of the original film of Alan Shepard\u2019s flight was scribbled over with felt pen, it\u2019s torn, and it\u2019s fixed with like a piece of sticky tape. But it\u2019s a reminder that these weren\u2019t taken for their aesthetic quality. They weren\u2019t taken for posterity. You know, they were technical information. The US was trying to catch up with the Soviets. Preservation wasn\u2019t high up on the agenda.<\/p>\n This is not some distant planet seen in a sci-fi movie, it\u2019s our Earth, in real life, as we explored space in the 1960s. The Sahara desert, photographed from Gemini 11, September 14, 1966. As we stand at the threshold of a new space age, heading back to the Moon, onward to Mars and beyond, the photographs taken during Mercury and Gemini will forever symbolize and document the beginning of humankind\u2019s expansion out into the cosmos.<\/p>\n NASA \/ ASU \/ Andy Saunders<\/p>\n ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/09-Our-Planet-Gemini-11_NASA_ASU_Andy-Saunders.jpg\")
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