Moon Mobile Carries Two Explorers, Life-Support Systems
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.
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.
Artwork Details
- Title: Moon Mobile Carries Two Explorers, Life-Support Systems
- Publisher: Aerojet-General (American)
- Date: 1962
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: Image: 7 5/8 × 9 9/16 in. (19.3 × 24.3 cm)
Sheet: 8 × 10 in. (20.3 × 25.4 cm) - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2018
- Object Number: 2018.270
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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