Astronaut Walter Schirra's decision to bring a Swedish-made Hasselblad on his Mercury spaceflight set the course for NASA's choice of the camera for the Apollo lunar program. //

Schirra's was a much more sophisticated — and pricey — choice than the simple Ansco Autoset that John Glenn bought for $40 at a Cocoa Beach, Florida, drug store. Glenn used it to take pictures from orbit on Friendship 7 in February 1962. The Hasselblad retailed for about $500 and used a much larger negative than Glenn's 35 mm camera. It also sported interchangeable, Carl Zeiss lenses and removable film magazines. //

Schirra acknowledged that his six orbits in October 1962 didn't leave much time for photography, but that on the next flight the following spring, with 22 orbits, astronaut Gordon Cooper "got some absolutely gorgeous pictures," said Schirra.

Hasselblad's Chris Cooze says until then, the space agency was so focused on the technical side of spaceflight that photography was something of an afterthought.

He says it was in 1965, when NASA released stunning photos of Ed White's spacewalk on Gemini 4, that Hasselblad "put two and two together" and realized the pictures were taken with one of their cameras.

"Then they got in touch with NASA to see if there was anything that we could cooperate on," Cooze says. //

On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 Lunar Module landed with two cameras, but only one went outside — carried by Neil Armstrong. That explains why nearly every photograph of an astronaut on the surface during that first landing are of Armstrong crewmate Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. Armstrong had the only camera for nearly the entire two-and-a-half hours the two walked around the Sea of Tranquility. //

"There were no directions to take photographs of each other, which I always find really interesting," she says. "You're going to travel all the way to the moon and nobody ever thought, 'Gee, we should take pictures of people.' " //

Moon rocks, it turns out, are more valuable than cameras. So, the astronauts were instructed to pack the exposed film but leave behind the Hasselblads.

And, that's where they remain today, untouched, at the six Apollo landing sites.