Moon Mobile Carries Two Explorers, Life-Support Systems

Aerojet-General

1962 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

In the late 1950s, Allyn B. Hazard, a development engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, envisioned a twelve-man expedition to the moon. He designed a space suit to integrate with a tractor-like moon mobile that would transport future astronauts on a ten-day, five-hundred-mile journey across the lunar surface. When Hazard left NASA to join Aerojet-General Corporation, he took his designs with him and created a two-hundred-pound prototype of the suit. It carried within it food, water, a radio, a tiny stove, and an air-conditioning system to protect the wearer from extreme temperature fluctuations. While it never made it to the moon, the suit became a popular sensation and, in 1966, the costume of Mattel’s astronaut action figure Major Matt Mason.

Artist

Aerojet-General

Date

1962

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2018