Cast your mind back: remember when space exploration looked fun? When astronauts would play golf on the moon, endlessly bound across its lunar surface and only stop to make the odd historical speech?
A golden period, indeed, and one at direct odds with the corporate-funded space missions of today, making All For Mankind - a new collection of recently unearthed Polaroid-like photographs from space now on show at London’s Breese Little Gallery - all the more special.
Casually snapped by NASA employees between 1964 to 1983, the vintage images (most of which retain their original catalogue stamps) include shots of Saturn, space walks over Hawaii, larking about with buggies on the moon and other intimate moments thousands of miles up - all vividly capturing the sense of adventure that got cosmonauts up there in the first place.
Feast your eyes on some of the best of them, below - because until we see that first Instagram on a Virgin Galactic flight, impromptu space snaps won’t get much sweeter.
All For Mankind runs now until Feb 2, 2014 at Breese Little, 1st floor, 30b Great Sutton Street, EC1V 0DU; breeselittle.com
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1. Apollo 11 lift-off seen from the top of the launch gantry, Apollo 11, July 1969
2. Crescent Earth from 10,000 miles, Apollo 4, November 1967
3. Eclipse of the Sun by the Earth, Apollo 12, November 1969
4. Florida keys from orbit, Gemini 4, June 1965
5.Harrison Schmitt, Eugene Cernan and the antenna on the Rover, crescent Earth above, Apollo 17, December 1972
6. James Irwin, David Scott and the Lunar Rover, Apollo 15, August 1971
7. James McDivitt, Ed White walking in space over Hawaii, Gemini 4, June 1965
8. James McDivitt, Ed White walking in space, the Earth limb beyond, Gemini 4, June 1965
9. Jupiter and its satellite Io, Voyager 2, June 1979
10. Liftoff of the last lunar mission, Apollo 17, December 1972
11. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin’s gold-plated visor reflects Armstrong and the Lunar Module, Apollo 11, July 1969
12. Owen Garriott working outside the spacecraft, Skylab 3, August 1973
13. Russell Schweickart, David Scott climbs through the open hatch of the Command Module, Apollo 9, March 1969
14. Saturn, Voyager 1, 1980
15. Space Shuttle STS-1 at Kennedy Space Center, Shuttle, March 1981
16. Splashdown of the Apollo 14 command module, Apollo 14, February 1971
17.William Anders, Earthrise, the first ever witnessed by human eyes, Apollo 8, December 1968
