NASA camera captures its own fiery demise after launch causes brush fire

VANDENBERG AFB, Calif. (FOX 13) - A remote camera for NASA ended up being destroyed by flames, and ended up recording its own demise.

Bill Ingalls has been a photographer with the agency for 30 years. The fiery death of the camera occurred on the day of a SpaceX rocket launch carrying spacecraft for the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission, a joint project between NASA and Germany. Ingalls explained he had six remote cameras, two outside a launch pad safety perimeter and four within in.

"Unfortunately, the launch started a grass fire that toasted one of the cameras outside the perimeter,” he said in a NASA press release.

The recorded video from the now-melted camera can see the vegetation light up after the launch. When the fire reached the camera, it was quickly engulfed. The camera’s body started to melt, and was destroyed, but the memory card was salvaged. 

The four cameras set up inside the perimeter was undamaged. The damaged camera was the one furthest from the launch pad, about a quarter of a mile away, according to NASA. The camera will most likely be placed at NASA's headquarters in Washington D.C.