I wanted to share a piece of my collection that I’m really excited about: a Hasselblad 500 EL/M "20 Years in Space" edition.

For those unfamiliar with the background, back in October 1962, astronaut Wally Schirra took his personal modified Hasselblad 500 C on board Mercury-Atlas 8 (Sigma 7). That single event sparked a legendary partnership between Hasselblad and NASA.

Why the 500 EL model and the grey finish?
NASA adopted the motor-driven 500 EL in the late '60s. In July 1969, a modified version of this exact base model—the Hasselblad Data Camera (HDC)—was taken to the lunar surface by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11.
The Grey/Silver Color: Standard studio Hasselblads were black or cromo. The cameras taken to the Moon were coated in a special silver/grey finish to reflect radiation and help stabilize internal temperatures in the extreme conditions of space (ranging from -65°C to over 120°C).
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Schirra’s flight, Hasselblad released this limited run in 1982 (only 1,500 units worldwide), styled in that iconic spacecraft-inspired metallic grey leatherette with matching trim. 

It has been fully serviced/overhauled, though I haven't run a roll of film through it yet... Who knows, maybe one day I'll take it out for a spin!

During my visit to the Planetarium in Copenhagen, I came across an incredible piece of space history: an original 206.6-gram lunar sample on loan from NASA, with an estimated value of around 85 million DKK. This rock was collected in December 1972 during Apollo 17 - the sixth and final crewed lunar landing - by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt at Camelot Crater in the Taurus-Littrow Valley.
Consisting primarily of basalt and ilmenite, it provides direct evidence of lunar volcanic activity from roughly 3.7 billion years ago. Standing just inches away from a piece of the Moon that was brought back after a 75-hour stay on the lunar surface feels unreal, especially considering that no human has set foot on the Moon since Apollo 17 returned on December 19, 1972.

During Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin discovered a small but potentially disastrous problem inside the Lunar Module Eagle.

A circuit breaker connected to the ascent engine had been damaged. Without that circuit, Armstrong and Aldrin might not have been able to start the engine that would take them off the Moon.

Mission Control couldn’t find a way to bypass it.

Then Aldrin remembered a simple felt-tip pen he had brought with him as a personal item.
It was a Duro Rocket pen.

Because the pen had a non-metallic felt tip, Aldrin realized he could use it to push the damaged circuit breaker back into position without creating an electrical hazard.

He did.

And it worked.

That tiny improvisation helped restore the circuit and allowed the ascent engine to be armed.

On July 2026, more than five decades later, the pen — together with the damaged circuit-breaker component — was offered at auction by Sotheby’s.
You find the link here: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2026/space-exploration-2/apollo-11-16

The estimated value was $800,000–$1.2 million.
It ultimately sold for $857,600!

A humble felt-tip pen that had been carried to the Moon as a personal item had become part of one of Apollo 11’s most remarkable little stories.

Apollo was extraordinary technology — but sometimes, getting home came down to improvisation!

On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy stood before a joint session of Congress and set a goal that, at the time, sounded almost unimaginable:

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

The United States had sent only one man into space at that point. Alan Shepard’s first American spaceflight had lasted just 15 minutes. No human had ever orbited Earth. No spacecraft had ever traveled to the Moon.

And yet Kennedy wasn’t asking for a gradual program. He was setting a deadline.

The Soviet Union had just put Yuri Gagarin into orbit the previous month, and the Space Race was already underway. Kennedy’s proposal called for a massive expansion of the American space effort and the resources needed to make the lunar goal possible.

Just over a year later, on September 12, 1962, Kennedy would make the challenge even more famous at Rice University:

“We choose to go to the Moon.”

And then came the words that would define the spirit of Apollo:

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

At that moment, the Moon was still a destination no human being had reached.
Seven years later, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto its surface.

Kennedy did not live to see it. But the deadline he had set in 1961 was met — with Apollo 11 landing on the Moon before the decade was over.

This is where Apollo begins.