2012-05-29
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Space Shuttle Program by San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives on Flickr.
2012-05-27
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Space Suit by San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives on Flickr (with contrast modified).
2012-04-25
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NASA channeling David Hockney, via Ethel Baraona.
I hadn’t thought about the connection between Hockney’s “joiners” and NASA composites before, so seeing it brought up made me wonder. It turns out the artist’s first works using that medium were around 1970, so a few years after the Surveyor images seen here. The majority of works in the composites section of his site date from around 1982, well after the first round of planetary surveys.
Nonetheless, it’s an interesting topic to muse on.
2012-04-21
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Looking more like astronauts than aircraft pilots, members of a fully-suited NASA research flight crew is seen here alongside an SR-71 aircraft. Two SR-71A’s were initially loaned to NASA from the Air Force for high-speed, high-altitude aeronautical research. The SR-71As plus an SR-71B pilot trainer aircraft were based at NASA’s Ames-Dryden Flight Research Facility (later, Dryden Flight Research Center), Edwards, California.
(via letsdolaunch, iamdanw)
2012-04-19
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A lunar panorama by Surveyor 7, the last of the unmanned landers sent by the US before the manned moon programme (via).
On Jan. 20, while the craft was still in daylight, the TV camera clearly saw two laser beams aimed at it from the night side of the crescent Earth, one from Kitt Peak National Observatory, Tucson, Arizona, and the other at Table Mountain at Wrightwood, California.
2012-04-07
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Last Days (in progress) by Philip Scott Andrews.
Andrews, from Daylight magazine, quoted at The Fox Is Black:
In the simplest terms, these photographs tell a story about men and women who show up to work every day and launch spaceships. It is a marvel, a symbol of the United States’ twentieth century dominance. But it is a tragic story. The U.S. is abandoning not only its manned spaceflight program but the individuals behind it whose ingenuity, bravery, and attention to detail made the program not only possible, but reliable… In looking back, we can look ahead to find the next adventure over the horizon.
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Astronaut Charles Conrad Jr., Apollo 12 commander, using a 70mm handheld Haselblad camera by NASA Goddard Photo and Video on Flickr.
I’ve always loved the aesthetic effect of the grid-marks on the photographs that were taken by the Apollo mission Hasselblads.
