posted 09-06-2013 09:48 AM               

Paul Fjeld is one of the best space artists out there in my opinion.

Lunar Module Eagle moments after the left-hand probe contacts the moon's surface (shown on right) still nearly five feet up, its engine blasting a dust sheet in all directions. The spacecraft attitude is shown four seconds before final touchdown as Neil Armstrong has arrested a leftward drift (north) but overcorrected so the LM is here beginning to slide to the right (south) in the picture. Original acrylic painting by Paul Fjeld.

posted 11-11-2014 08:30 AM            

In 1975, Fjeld recreated one of the most troubled space scenes ever: the Skylab 2 extravehicular activity (EVA) in Earth orbit when astronauts Joseph P. Kerwin and Charles Conrad Jr. had to cut the aluminum strapping which prevented the Skylab Orbital Workshop solar array system wing from deploying (June 7, 1973). This artistic effort took weeks to research: Fjeld needed some hundred or so photographs and about 300 pages of transcripts from the flight to get all the details for the painting. Also, he used several pages of teleprinter messages containing the actual instructions on the EVA.

But his best-appreciated artworks are his legendary ASTP concept paintings, where he depicted the main stages of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission, the Apollo and Soyuz transposition and docking maneuvers and joint spaceflight months prior to the actual mission.

posted 11-11-2014 12:46 PM            

Analysis indicates that the +Y footpad was the first to make lunar surface contact. At the time of contact, the Lunar Module was basically translating along the body Y axis in the –Y direction.

posted 03-03-2015 09:18 PM            

My painting shows Eagle a bit more than 4 seconds from touchdown and in that 4 seconds there was quite a bit of what Armstrong characterized as "spastic control" as he pulsed his hand controller several times to get the left roll (from his perspective, shown at this point in the painting) straightened out and to arrest the left drift from his earlier over-correction. I painted the first of these showing the -Y down and +Y up thrusters firing. He put two major 4 deg. per second right roll inputs and touched down with a roll almost opposite of that shown in the painting, so that the +Y pad was lower and was the first of the *pads* that made contact.

In photos from '11 you can also see the -Y probe first contact then drag mark almost directly below the engine bell.