Spacebourne

Since 1996 NASA astronaut Donald R. Pettit has racked up 370 days aboard the International Space Station and 13 hours of space walking. Along with conducting scientific experiments, taking photographs is part of the job and that s just fine with Pettit, an enthusiastic snapper since he began with a Brownie camera in the sixth grade. Pettit has compiled an extraordinary collection of awe-inspiring photographs from space in Spaceborne (Press Syndication Group, $59.95). The new book has his infrared images of an erupting volcano in Patagonia, underwater coral dunes in the Bahamas and amoeba-like incandescent auroras. It also has the astronaut s poetic musings on celestial wonders. (He compares the beauty of flying through an aurora to being miniaturized and inserted into a neon sign.) Nighttime is his specialty: lighting storms, passing comets and city lights. When you re in orbit looking down at Earth, you can see entire mountain ranges and discern geologic structures that are impossible to see on the ground, he says. During a 2003 expedition, Pettit used spare parts to create something called a barn-door tracker, which allowed for sharper high-resolution photos of city lights from the orbiting space station. He says his favorite vantage point was the station s cupola, a dome-shaped module with seven windows pointing toward Earth and about eight cameras prepped with a variety of lenses. It’s the most marvelous place to do observation or photography, Pettit says. You just grab one and start clicking. Technology allows astronauts to more easily share their experiences as modern-day explorers, he says. One of the best ways to do that is through photography.

Astronaut Don Pettit took the millionth photo from the International Space Station. He also took hundreds of thousands of other photos. Many of them were routine photos taken during safety checks and engineering troubleshooting. But he shot a trove of others while off-duty, from the seven-windowed Cupola of the Space Station, capturing scenes both celestial and terrestrial. Pettit has gathered some of his favorites in a new book, Spaceborne. He joins Ira to talk about the challenges of pursuing photography in space, what compels him to click the shutter, and why art has a place in an astronaut s mission. (17 minute on-air audio segment available online)