Joe Zawodny, a NASA Langley employee and avid astrophotographer, was contacted by a cable television producer and asked if they could use some lunar lava tubes imagery (photos and videos) they found in his web collection for an upcoming show.
Joe keeps most of his imagery on the web, accessible to the public, at http://flickr.com/photos/JMZawodny. It turns out that their production staff uses the Internet’s larger photo and video sites as resources for their shows. While browsing the more than three million photos, Langley lucked out that they happen to find Joe’s images.
Zawodny was contacted this week and told LaRC would be making an appearance on the show, Sci-Trek: Mining the Moon, that will premiere on the Discovery Channel next Thursday, December 11 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. He was given no details on what imagery was selected, only that Langley was involved.
It is interesting to note, Joe was told that years ago LaRC was involved in some early work mapping out the locations of lunar lava tubes and developing scenarios for using them as habitats that could shield lunar visitors from the harmful effects of the space environment (primarily solar radiation). Joe said “I find it interesting that the subject of lava tubes has come back to LaRC, albeit indirectly.”
Mark your calendars to watch next week’s premiere!
As a one time photographer who actually got paid, I looked through many of the photos and they are quite good! I don’t know how you managed some of the angles of the shots.
I second Rob’s comment! Some of Joe’s daytime shots are phenomenal too.
Thanks. I received word yesterday that the show’s premiere was being delayed. Apparently Discovery was so pleased with the show that they wanted to mount an appropriate advertising campaign. When I find out the new date/time for the show I’ll post an update.