Astronauts by Steve Pyke

About the project:

For the past two years, Steve Pyke has been involved in a photographic odyssey. The resulting project was triggered by a childhood experience. “I remember in 1969 sitting with my mother and father and watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon. The memory will never leave me” From it came a desire to meet and photograph the principal characters in this incredible story.

Click on the images to see who’s who.

These space colony concept drawings were the result of collaboration between Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill, the NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University in the 1970’s. They held a series of space colony summer studies which explored the possibilities of humans living in giant orbiting spaceships. 

The Guardian has assembled a gallery of some of the 4,500 golden age of space exploration pictures that will be up for auction at the Westlicht Auction House in Vienna on November 23.

In 2010, Viewpoint magazine asked the design firm Base to come up with a new logo for NASA. When it was presented to NASA, they turned it down because they were perfectly content with their current logo, which they’ve used from 1959–82 and 1992–present. What do you think? Is it time for a new look for NASA?

Last Days is an ongoing series by photographer Philip Scott Andrews chronicling the end of the Space Shuttle program.

Andrews on his work:

Since the first launch in 1981, The Space Shuttle program has been a symbol of American 20th-century leadership. Soon, it will be a bygone era.

I have spent the past three years photographing scenes few witness.

In the simplest terms, I hope these photographs tell a story of the work of men and women who came to work every day to launch spaceships. By doing their jobs well, these workers - from much-hailed astronauts to Harley-riding technicians - made the extraordinary task of spaceflight seem mundane.

Of course, this work was anything but ordinary. It was risky business, undertaken in the pursuit of knowledge and scientific advancement. Unfortunately, there have been tragic endings. Like the intrepid explorers for centuries before them, astronauts have lost their lives looking over the horizon at what lies beyond.

These photographs are my incomplete memorial to their achievements. I hope this work can serve as a partial archive, as a tribute to the men and women who spent their lives making spaceflight a daily activity. In looking back, we can look ahead to find the next adventure on that distant horizon.

Photos from the Expedition 32 launch in Kazakhstan on July 15, 2012. It carried Expedition 32 Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko, NASA Flight Engineer Sunita Williams and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Flight Engineer Akihiko Hoshide to the International Space Station.

Discover the collage art of Ben Giles

Spectacular false color images of Mercury from NASA’s Messenger mission. Click on the top image to see the full version.

Eyewitness to Space is a collection of over 1,750 drawings from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum archive.

These cool rocket prints by Danny Haas are available for purchase at Society6.

Morning on Mars. Spectacular images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), which was carried aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Some awesomely retro highlights from the NASA Apollo Mission Events archive. 

Carbon: Cosmic Worlds of Charles Lindsay is grand in both scale and vision. 

About the project:

Carbon is a creation of fictitious worlds, drawing on my interest in the aesthetics of space exploration, microscopic discovery and abstract symbols. I am intrigued by the idea that so much of our expanding scientific knowledge is based on images from beyond our body’s normal scope of vision. I am also interested in the challenge and implications of comprehending our relative scale within the universe.

These ‘photographs’ are made from negatives which utilize a carbon emulsion on a transparent base - the result of my experiments and manipulation. Numerous generations in the fluid’s history create minute evaporation trails, rendering an archeology of time.

Both the stills and videos are generated from extremely high resolution digital scans of the drawn negatives. I am also applying this data to 3D topographic motion programs and producing electronic sound pieces in response to the imagery.

Lindsay has given as much thought to how his work should be displayed as to the work itself. To get a better idea of the scope of his project, you can see his installation concept in this video:

3 - CARBON installation concept from charles lindsay on Vimeo.