NASA Camera Gets Toasted By A Brush Fire During SpaceX Rocket Launch

NASA photographer Bill Ingalls found himself one camera short when a bushfire burnt his remote camera to a crisp during a SpaceX rocket launch.

Surprisingly, the toasted equipment still managed to capture a great still of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket's takeoff on Tuesday, May 22. It even managed to record its own demise.

A Toasty Camera

The veteran photographer took to social media to share a photo of the damaged camera as well as two other shots of the images it managed to take before getting completely toasted.

"This was result of a small brush fire, which is not unheard of from launches, and was extinguished by fireman, albeit, after my cam was baked," Ingalls wrote on the caption.

According to a report from Space.com, the camera was a Canon DSLR that was positioned roughly a quarter mile from the SpaceX launch pad at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It's only one of Ingalls' six remote cameras set up around the perimeter to document the important flight. Four of these cameras were placed much closer to the launch pad.

"I had six remotes, two outside the launch pad safety perimeter and four inside," Ingalls says in a statement from NASA.

Luckily, despite the bushfire accident, even the burnt camera managed to do its job, capturing a stunning frame of the rocket's takeoff.