CAPE CANAVERAL—Expressing excitement about the collaborative mission with the European Space Agency, NASA officials announced Monday the successful launch of a really nice Nikon DSLR camera strapped to a rocket to gather photos of the sun. “Thus far, we’ve been limited in our ability to take images of the sun, but this baby is a top-of-the-line camera, which, according to a number of Amazon reviews, takes really great pics,” said NASA senior project manager Melissa Bolton, browsing through the high-quality images of trees and birds that her solar launch team had shot at a nearby park with the Nikon D810A. “At first, we were thinking of using the latest iPhone after seeing those billboards advertising its new camera, but since this project could bring new insight into the many forces responsible for solar behavior, we decided to go all-out with a totally sweet DSLR. This thing has really good auto-focus, a 20x zoom, and a little sun icon right on the camera, which is perfect because that’s what we’re shooting. It can hold a ton of pictures, too, so we can just set the countdown timer and we’ll check what we got in a couple of years. Sure, the Nikon is a little pricey, but you don’t need to be a professional to take great pictures. It’s nice because the camera is pretty much idiot proof.” At press time, NASA engineers were panicking after realizing that they had forgotten to remove the lens cap.

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