John Glenn's camera: the drugstore Minolta that went into orbit

October 28, 2026|Toni

John Glenn's Ansco Autoset camera from Friendship 7, 1962, on its pistol grip and held in a silver spacesuit glove, with a spacecraft lit in blue behind it

Cocoa Beach, Florida, early 1962. John Glenn stops at a drugstore after a haircut to pick up a few things. One of them is a 35mm camera sold under the Ansco name.

On February 20, 1962, that camera went into orbit with him aboard Friendship 7. With it, Glenn took the first human-captured color still photographs of Earth, according to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. The camera was a Minolta Hi-Matic under another badge. NASA rebuilt it in a hurry, after first doubting a camera belonged on board at all.

Camera: Ansco Autoset, made by Minolta as the Hi-Matic
Flown: Friendship 7, February 20, 1962, three orbits
Person: John H. Glenn Jr., Mercury astronaut
What made it different: automatic exposure from a selenium meter, so no f-stops to set in a pressure suit
Where it is now: National Air and Space Museum, inventory number A19670198000

Why NASA did not want a camera

Photography was not part of the plan. NASA worried that a camera would distract Glenn from his mandatory procedures, according to the John Glenn archives at Ohio State University. Weeks before the flight, Glenn persuaded the program director otherwise. His case was that a flight like this deserved a photographic record.

Gary Kitmacher, writing for NASA, calls the camera an afterthought. In 1962, he notes, hardly anyone saw pictures from space as more than a branch of industrial photography. Everything Glenn did in orbit counted as an experiment. No one knew for certain whether weightlessness would even let a man see properly.

There was a political worry too. Kitmacher records serious concern that pictures of other nations, taken from orbit, would be seen as an act of ill will. A camera was a recreational extra at best.

John Glenn's camera, turned upside down

The camera Glenn bought was the Ansco Autoset. Museum curator Jennifer Levasseur describes it as a Minolta Hi-Matic, repackaged by the New York-based Ansco Company. Minolta's own corporate history lists 1962 as the year the Hi-Matic recorded the Friendship 7 mission.

Its appeal came down to one feature. A selenium meter set the exposure automatically, so Glenn would not have to change f-stops in flight. Camera-wiki.org lists a 45mm f/2 lens and a Citizen leaf shutter. The meter chose pairs of aperture and speed, from f/2 at 1/45 second to f/16 at 1/500.

Then there is the price, the detail everyone repeats. Popular accounts, such as PetaPixel's in 2023, put it at $40. Neither the museum's object record nor Levasseur's account gives a figure.

NASA technicians changed the camera in three ways. They mounted it upside down on a pistol grip with a trigger. They added controls for the shutter and film advance that a gloved hand could work. And because the helmet kept Glenn's eye away from the built-in viewfinder, they fitted a larger one on top.

Kitmacher describes the work as hasty. The museum lists the finished object at 13.5 by 7.5 by 24.5 cm, about 5.3 by 3 by 9.6 inches, grip included. Its materials include metal, glass, quartz, plastic, paint and hook-and-loop fabric. A panel of that fabric still covers the back.

Front of the Ansco Autoset (Minolta Hi-Matic) flown on Friendship 7 in 1962: black body upside down, lens and honeycomb selenium meter cell, added viewfinder on top, aluminum pistol grip — The Ansco Autoset flown on Friendship 7, 1962, shown upside down as NASA mounted it. The honeycomb window below the lens is the selenium meter cell. Camera, Ansco, 35mm, Glenn, Friendship 7. National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution (A19670198000). Smithsonian Open Access, CC0.

Three orbits, and a missing roll

Friendship 7 lifted off on February 20, 1962. Picture-taking did not go to plan. In a paper he wrote that May for a scientific symposium, Glenn explained why. Problems with the spacecraft's attitude control system made photography a secondary task.

The air-to-ground transcript catches him reloading in weightlessness. He reports which roll is going into the camera. He asks the ground to stand by while he changes film. Then one roll will not come to hand:

"Negative, number 2 is missing; I'm using number 3."

That line comes from the Friendship 7 transcript of February 20, 1962. It is the most ordinary sentence of the flight. A man in orbit is short of one roll of film.

Weightlessness also helped. Glenn later described it in his memoir, in a passage the museum quotes on its record for the camera:

"When I needed both hands, I just let go of the camera and it floated there in front of me."

The sunsets impressed him most. In his May 1962 paper, Glenn wrote that sunset came 18 times faster than on the ground. A band of color stayed on the horizon for four to five minutes afterward. He added that the eye could see more of that band than the camera captured.

The other camera on board

Glenn did not carry one camera. NASA also modified a Leica for the flight. The museum holds its special viewfinder. It has a suction cup on the back, so Glenn could press it against his visor when the visor had to stay down.

Which camera did what is where accounts differ. Levasseur's 2011 museum post first said the Ansco was used for ultraviolet spectrographic photographs of the constellation Orion. A later author's note reverses that. The Ansco took the standard photographs, and the Leica the spectrographic images of Orion's belt.

Camera-wiki.org still gives the older version. The museum's current object record is clear, though. It credits the Ansco with the first human-captured color still photographs of Earth.

So the popular story holds, with one correction. The drugstore camera took the pictures people remember. The Leica, with its suction-cup viewfinder, did the science.

What the pictures changed

By later standards the results were modest. Glenn wrote that the pictures were made in haste, though some showed a few items of interest. They were enough. Kitmacher records that unmodified Hasselblad cameras flew on the last two one-man Mercury missions, in 1962 and 1963. Hasselblads then became the mainstay of the early space program.

NASA later put other off-the-shelf equipment through formal tests. The story of its chronograph tests is told in The Speedmaster, and the eleven tests NASA set.

Glenn's name stayed linked to the maker. In a 2008 oral history for Ohio State University, he put it plainly:

"I had used a Minolta camera on the Mercury flight. It was the first of the automatic cameras."

That is how Glenn remembered it, more than four decades on. In May 2000, Minolta and Japan's National Space Development Agency had presented him with an identical Hi-Matic. That camera is now in the Ohio State University archives. NASA transferred the flown camera to the Smithsonian in 1963.

Back of John Glenn's 1962 Ansco Autoset camera, covered with a tan hook-and-loop fabric panel, with the pistol grip and added viewfinder, seen from above on gray — The back of the flown Ansco Autoset, covered with hook-and-loop fabric, with the pistol grip below. Camera, Ansco, 35mm, Glenn, Friendship 7. National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution (A19670198000). Smithsonian Open Access, CC0.

The Minolta Hi-Matic now: what collectors look for

The flown camera is a museum object. The camera it started as is not. The original Hi-Matic is the model with a selenium meter. On Glenn's camera the cell sits below the lens, only because the body is upside down.

Camera-wiki.org dates the launch to 1961 and lists the f/2 lens as six elements in five groups. A later variant had a 45mm f/2.8 with four elements. From the Hi-Matic 7 onward, Minolta used CdS meters placed in the filter ring. The honeycomb selenium window is the quick way to tell the first model.

The Ansco Autoset is the same camera under an American badge. According to camera-wiki.org, Ansco advertised it in Popular Photography in November 1961. For a collector, that badge is the link to Friendship 7. If you are choosing a first film camera rather than a piece of history, start with Which 35mm camera should you buy.

Glenn went to Cocoa Beach for a haircut. He came back with the camera that would take the first color photographs of Earth by a human hand. NASA only had to give it a handle.

You can see what is in the 35mm film cameras collection or browse all cameras in the shop.