During the second Gemini mission, the first image of a spacecraft in orbit was taken.

A ZEISS Ikon Contarex Special camera attached to a gas powered propulsion gun which enabled the astronaut to maneuver as he floated in zero gravity.

The images brought back from this first American spacewalk and their media impact helped gain photography an important role during the space missions. High-quality images could provide important information about earth, its landmasses, weather patterns and climate systems. The astronauts’ photography training was extended from now on.

Not everything went smoothly when preparing to travel to the moon, such as during Gemini 9, when a docking maneuver went awry.
The crew approaches the ATDA (Augmented Target Docking Adapter) and saw the target looking like the jaws of an angry alligator, due to a mis hub with deployment of the nose shroud. Photographs of the maneuver revealed the technical problem.

The images of the event were so crisp that they made it easy to subsequently identify the defect with the mechanism of the protective shroud.

Beginning with Gemini 4, ZEISS cameras and lenses became part of the astronauts’ standard on-board equipment, helping to document the missions and serve as a basis for analyses.

Only once did one go missing: during Gemini 10, a Hasselblad (SWC) with ZEISS Biogon 4.5 / 38 lens slipped from the astronaut’s grasp during a spacewalk -- officially referred to as "extravehicular activity" (EVA) -- as he was attempting to rendezvous with the unmanned Agena spacecraft in orbit. Quite unexpectedly, the camera then became a “satellite” in orbit around the earth.

One of the 20th century's defining moments was almost lost to posterity. The images from the Apollo 11 mission arrived in Houston shortly after the crew's return to Earth.

However, before the moon photos were developed, the processing equipment was checked one more time with a test film. During this inspection, the film processor suddenly started leaking ethylene oxide and destroyed the test film. This turned out to be a blessing: thanks to this final test, the development team quickly fixed the defect and could successfully develop the images of the first Moon Landing. The photographs taken during the moon missions were published around the world and made history.

One of the tasks of the Apollo 16 mission was to continue experiments on taking ultraviolet (UV) photographs of the earth and the moon which were started during previous missions.

The goal was to photograph the earth and the moon using light in the ultraviolet spectrum and compare these images with natural light photographs. The astronauts used the specially designed ZEISS UV Sonnar 4.3/105 lens. Four filters were used to split the UV light into different wavelengths. Depending on the filtered wavelength, the earth and moon were visible with different levels of detail and contrasts. With short wavelengths, few details were lost in the images of the moon. However, in the photos of the earth, the same wavelength reduced contrast. These lenses visualized the atmospheric dimensions and the influence of the UV sunlight on the earth.