As an editorial photographer at the Boston Herald, I was a brief witness to a part of American space exploration history.
My week-long assignment at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, while a staff photographer at the Boston Herald, was to photograph the events and preparation of the shuttle Discovery leading up to the Friday morning launch that would be dubbed as America’s Return to Space.
Photographing the shuttle launch was no easy task. The press viewing area is over one mile away from the launch pad. NASA allows unmanned remote shooting areas about 100 yards from the launch pad. To achieve the remote photos, I had to rig cameras on a tripod, the day prior to the launch, that would be triggered by the shuttle’s vibration at lift-off. In 1988 everything was film so you only had 36 exposures fired continuously when the shutter tripped. There was another obstacle with the humid Florida weather in the swamps of the Kennedy Space Center – condensation on the lenses. For this veteran shuttle launch photographers used a plastic cap that was secured to the front of the lens with a rubber band. The rubber band was attached to the camera’s rewind knob – the first shutter trip would rotate the rewind knob and pop the plastic cap off the lens.
In 1988 the Boston Herald was only black and white. This black and white image was taken from one of my four remote cameras triggered by the vibration device.
Discovery roared off of the launch pad after a 98 minute weather-caused delay on the morning of September 29, 1988. It was a spectacular sight to view the launch in person. It was a great return, not just NASA, but the country as a whole.
Space Shuttle Discovery is one of the retired orbiters of the space Shuttle Program of NASA, the space agency of the United States, and was operational from its maiden flight, on August 30, 1984, until its final landing during on March 9, 2011. Prior to its retirement, Discovery was NASA's Orbiter Fleet leader, having flown 39 successful missions in over 27 years of service.
