trained on something else.
It was a remote camera activated by sound that caught a now-famous frog in mid-air Sept. 6 as a rocket blasted off to send a robotic orbiter to the moon, said Keith Koehler, news chief at the Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island in eastern Virginia.
The camera, about 150 feet from the launch pad, was activated by the sound of the liftoff and took a sequence of eight or nine photos.
One of those photos included a frog, no doubt surprised to be airborne, backlit by the rocket's glare.
"It's a real photo and a real frog," said Jason Townsend, NASA's deputy social media manager.
Thanks to the Internet, the photo quickly went viral, giving the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft more exposure than it might have attracted otherwise.
"It was an absolutely incredible moment to see something like that go viral," Townsend said Friday by phone from Washington. "It was one of those outtake moments - a great way to continue to share about the launch."
Asked about the frog's fate, Koehler said, "We have no idea."
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