What happens when rocket launch fire and a camera mix

Sometimes fire and camera equipment don’t mix, as one NASA photographer found out.

Bob Ingalls, a 30-year NASA veteran, had set up six remote cameras to capture the launch last earlier this month of the NASA/German GRACE-FO, a satellite designed to detect the movement of Earth’s water masses and changes in mass within the planet by measuring variations in gravity.

Images of a brushfire approaching then destroying a remote camera set up to photograph the NASA/German GRACE-FO launch on May 22 Images of a brushfire approaching, then destroying, a remote camera set up to photograph the NASA/German GRACE-FO launch on May 22, 2018. Credits: NASA/Bill Ingalls

The launch, aboard a Space X Falcon 9 rocket, was from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Unfortunately, one camera -- the furthest from the launch, as it happened -- didn’t survive. A brush fire started by the rocket spread and engulfed the camera. The camera got “toasted,” Ingalls said in a press release.

Fortunately, although the camera didn’t survive, the memory card did.