Find and purchase stunning photos of the Orion spacecraft launch by Chris Cook at
www.cookphoto.com.
On December 5, 2014, NASA’s latest endeavor to once again send humans beyond low Earth orbit took a major step forward. The agency’s Orion spacecraft passed its
first test flight with flying colors. Chris Cook, a professional photographer from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, covered the event from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida for
Astronomy and sent back some incredible
photos.
While Chris captured most of his photos of the launch from the NASA causeway, about as close as an imager can physically get, he also has remote cameras that get some incredible images. One was even as close as 300 feet from the Delta IV Heavy rocket that Orion rode into space. Chris' remote cameras are attached to a sound-activated trigger. Once the engines ignite and the sounds increase, the cameras know to shoot.
Chris has photographed other NASA launches, but at only 3 miles from the event, it was twice as close as he had ever been. He says that "being 3 miles from over 2 million pounds of thrust was a great experience." Although his focus was on still photos, Chris did capture video from his location to record his perspective of the sound and people's reactions (one
woman next to him was crying with joy). The launch stars around the 5:10 mark in the video below.
Chris' still photos from the Orion launch are gorgeous. You can find a gallery of them on
Astronomy.com and all of the photos on
www.cookphoto.com. Each is available for sale as prints.