NASA Reveals Unusual Reason Camera Melted 400 Yards Away From SpaceX Launch

On May 22, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched seven satellites—including two from NASA—from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The rocket’s nine Merlin engines roared to life, blasting the Falcon up toward space and spewing incredible heat below.

A quarter of a mile away, NASA photographer Bill Ingalls had set up a remote camera to catch the action. But, when he returned to retrieve it, firefighters were waiting. What was once a fancy camera was now a lump of charred and twisted plastic.

Bill Ingalls's melted camera shown after a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch in California, May 22. Bill Ingalls/NASA

"I had six [remote cameras], two outside the launch pad safety perimeter and four inside," Ingalls told NASA. The “toasty” camera was the furthest from the launch site, some 400 yards away from the pad and outside the safety perimeter. However, Ingalls’s other cameras survived the launch without a scratch.

Read more: Stunning SpaceX launch photos of the Iridium-6, Grace-FO launch from California

Although its body was scorched, the camera's memory card remained intact. It had managed to preserve the camera's last, blazing moments, which you can see in the GIF below:

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch leads to the fiery death of this NASA camera. Bill Ingalls/NASA

A bed of vegetation, NASA revealed, was to blame for the damage. "Unfortunately, the launch started a grass fire that toasted one of the cameras outside the perimeter," Ingalls said. The intense heat from the launch set the arid California flora alight, causing a brushfire. Flames ripped through the plants and engulfed the camera, melting its plastic body.

See all of the best photos of the week in these slideshows

What's left of the camera will likely end up on on display at NASA HQ in Washington, DC, the agency reported.

Read more: Why did SpaceX abort the Falcon 9 Block 5 launch moments before liftoff?

The Falcon 9 was carrying two NASA Grace-FO mission satellites, among others. Short for "Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On," Grace-FO will track how mass on Earth is moving around the planet. In most cases, this mass will be water, in the form of lakes, rivers, ice sheets and sea levels, for example. A joint venture with the German Research Centre for Geosciences, it continues the work of the original Grace mission.

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