A Thousand Words – Pictures From Space

Astronauts train for years to prepare for spaceflight. One of the things they learn: how to capture the perfect image. KBR’s Paul Reichert is one of the experts behind that training. In his role as Flight Operations Imagery Instructor on KBR’s Intravehicular Activities Operations contract with NASA, Paul teaches astronauts how to use a variety of imaging equipment for unique situations, including spacecraft diagnostics, in-space interviews, specimen collection, or potentially snapping the next iconic moon pic. Listen as Paul discusses his passion for photography and how a childhood hobby is now helping prepare astronauts for action.

Transcript

IN ORBIT: A KBR PODCAST

Season 6, Episode 3

A Thousand Words – Pictures From Space

INTRODUCTION

Hello! I’m John, and THIS is “In Orbit.”

People of the tiny blue dot called earth, welcome to the podcast.

Whether you’re stopping by again or flying by for the first time, we appreciate you checking in and staying in our orbit.

And speaking of orbit! …

If you’ve been paying attention to the news lately, then you know that the four astronauts just performed a lunar flyby, the first time that humankind has been back to the moon in 50 years.

Historic. Exhilarating. Inspiring. Words can fail us in the face of such an amazing moment. As is so often the case, it’s a time when an image can do the heavy lifting of crystalizing how significant the moment is.

If you’ve been keeping up with current events, you’ve likely seen any one of a number of interviews the crew has conducted aboard the Orion spacecraft.

And right now, if you visit nasa.gov/gallery, you can look at a treasure trove of images the crew has captured of themselves in action, the earth and of the pock-marked the lunar surface.

Looking at some of those images, you might thing, “Wow, these astronauts are great photographers!” And you’d be right! But the quality and content of those images is thanks in no small part to the amazing training the crew received from KBR specialists working with NASA.

That is what we’re going to be talking about today, and we are thrilled to share with you a conversation I had the pleasure of having about a month ago with one of those specialists, KBR’s Paul Reichert.

Paul is Flight Operations IVA Imagery Instructor — IVA is intravehicular activities operations — and he works as part of KBR’s Integrated Mission Operations, or IMOC 3 Contract III team with NASA.

Welcome to the podcast, Paul!

INTERVIEW

John Arnold

And I am very excited to introduce you all to Paul Reichert. Paul is Flight Operations IVA Imagery Instructor. IVA is Intravehicular Activities Operations for NASA. Welcome to the podcast, Paul.

Paul Reichert

Yeah, it's great to be here.

John Arnold

This is very exciting. Anytime we have a space episode, I kind of get giddy. My inner 4th grader gets really excited about what we're going to talk about today. So before we get into the meat of our conversation, Paul, we'd love for you to tell us how you you got interested in photography, and how that path led to where you are today.

Paul Reichert

Yeah, so I first got a camera when I was about eight years old. My neighbor down the street was having a garage sale, and I saw this really neat little camera. It was an old 110 film camera. My neighbor was really nice, and he said, if you want this camera, I'll just give it to you. So he gave me the camera, and I used that for a couple of years, so that got me started. And then when I got into junior high and high school, I started taking photography classes, and I was doing pretty good. I was winning some awards. I was having fun doing it. And at the same time, I had a brother who actually went to the Rochester Institute of Technology for biomedical engineering.

So RIT, as it's known, has a pretty big photography school with lots of different disciplines. And so he was in the biomedical field and I went a couple of times to visit him and he let me use some of their facilities and it was really kind of fun and I got introduced to the community. And then when I was a senior in high school, I went and did a tour at RIT. And I went to the photo tech department, the imaging and photographic technology department. And when I went there, they had this hallway where they had pictures of all the graduates from that program. And it was a small program, maybe like 10 to 15 people a year. But one of the interesting things that the professor did is he wrote below their names where they worked. And as I went down the hall, I could see like, they worked for NASA, they worked for the FBI, the CIA, they worked for Kodak, Fuji, AGFA. Adobe, you name it, they work there. And I was thinking, “Wow, this is really impressive. How do I get in this thing?”

And so I did the tour and that was it. I was sold. And so I went to, attended RIT for four years, graduated with a degree in imaging and photographic technology. And while I was in school, I did a couple of internships at NASA Langley Research Center, which is down in Hampton, Virginia. And it was a really cool job. I got to do all kinds of photography and imagery all over the center for different things. And in 2001, they had an opening at the Johnson Space Center to train astronauts how to use all their cameras. So I was thinking, man, that would be a great job. So I applied and I got it. And so started in 2001 and I worked the space shuttle program until it ended in 2011. And then I jumped over to the International Space Station program and trained those astronauts for about 10 years. And then in about 2022, I started working the Artemis program. And here we are today.

John Arnold

So literally, Your Space Odyssey started in 2001.

Paul Reichert

It did. Isn't that kind of freaky, but it did.

John Arnold

Yeah, you should keep that in your back pocket for your autobiography. That is a fascinating journey. I am always very excited when I hear about people that really found a passion early. Photography has always been something that I've been tangentially interested in, but have never actively pursued. So it's really interesting to hear about your journey. I would love to hear about what it was about photography that really grabbed you and interested you from that early age.

Paul Reichert

You know, I think the thing that interested me the most was that I could be very creative, and I could create something and control it from beginning to end. So I could set up the photograph, I could take it, and then I could develop it myself, and then I could print it myself, I could mount it myself, I could frame it myself, and then it was like a piece of me that was now part of the world, I created that. And I think that was something that really inspired me when I was getting started in photography.

John Arnold

That's wonderful. What were your favorite things to take pictures of? Were you taking pictures of nature, candid photographs of people? What kinds of things early on in your photography career were you interested in photographing?

Paul Reichert

Yeah, well, my most early subjects were definitely my family, which whether they wanted it or not, they got it. So I took a lot of portraits of my family, but when I got to college, I actually really enjoyed nature photography. So I grew up in upstate New York, and we had rivers and streams and creeks and forests all over the place. And so you could go out, drive 10 minutes down the road and be at a state park, and you could be taking pictures of waterfalls or taking pictures of some kind of nature. And I always enjoyed that. was my favorite part.

John Arnold

That's wonderful. I've spent a little time in upstate New York up around Cooperstown and Rose Boom and small communities like that. It's a beautiful part of the world. Thanks for sharing that with us. In researching for this episode and following your notes that you'd sent over preliminarily, I was reading online that the NASA Flight Operations Directorate, and this is a quote from that, touches every program and part of sending humans to space. And In your notes, you referred to this as plan, train, fly planning. So would you tell us how imaging and photography figure into that NASA directorate?

Paul Reichert

Yeah, so first of all, when the mission is announced, there are a lot of different requirements, right? There's requirements for all kinds of things. But one of the areas is for imagery. So engineers, scientists, public affairs, All these different entities that are part of NASA need imagery for something. So they write all their requirements, and then we take those requirements in, and then we have to figure out how our camera hardware can satisfy those requirements. So we sit down with the hardware, we try to figure out what settings should we use that are gonna give the best imagery, what do we need to do to get that imagery collected correctly or as best as we can, and so from there, we develop the crew procedures.

The crew procedures can be quite a few. So for instance, on the ARMIS II mission, we have over 100 crew procedures that we developed. And some of them are backup, but a lot of them are prime procedures. The crew is going to use a lot of them during the mission. So we develop that. And then once we get the crew procedures together, then we start to train the crew. And we train the crew. We have about 10 to 12 classes that we train them on. So we spend around 20 to 25 hours during their training flow, which sounds like a lot, but actually their training flow can last a couple of years. So when you think about that, it's not a lot of time.

So we space our training throughout their entire training flow so that we can... We have refreshers and so they don't forget things. Right. Then we're working crew timeline inputs. So in the crew mission, they have a timeline. Every single day has specific activities. And so we have to enter in their activities for the imagery requirements. And then once that's all done, then they fly. Right. And then once they fly, then we're kind of their tech support on the ground.

John Arnold

Fantastic. For the gear heads out there, I'm sure they would love to hear about what kinds of cameras and other equipment that you're teaching the astronauts how to use and handle.

Paul Reichert

Yeah, so we, like I said, we have a lot of requirements, so a lot of imagery requirements. So we actually have a handful of different camera systems that we use. Typically, we have pretty high end professional 35-millimeter cameras that we train the crew with, train them how to use. We also have video cameras. We have action cameras, so small little cameras that we can place in certain tight spaces where you can't really put a person or get a big camera in. We also use Phones and tablets, those have cameras on them, so we use those as well. And we also use microphones because when we have to do like public affairs events and things like that, where the astronauts have to interact with the public or the media while they're on their mission, they have to have a way to be able to talk to them. So we use microphones that integrate with the cameras.

One interesting thing about our cameras, we operate them in a very different environment than what's on Earth, right? So the space environment has more radiation. The crew is weightless for the most part, unless they're on the lunar surface. And then it's about one sixth gravity. So that radiation in these different environments, they create issues. So for instance, the radiation can affect the sensor on the cameras. So it can actually kill a pixel. And the way that shows up in a picture is it shows up as like a blue or a red or a green, some odd color So like on the International Space Station, we actually have to switch out our cameras about once every 18 months. Because if we don't, the amount of pixels that are damaged gets to be so many that the image doesn't look very good anymore. So we have to change out our cameras pretty often.

We also make modifications to the firmware quite often, the software inside of the camera, to do very specific things because just the off-the-shelf camera may not be able to do exactly what we want. And so we work with the vendors to make adjustments to the software, and then they deliver the software to us so we can use it. And then, of course, we have cameras inside and outside of the vehicle that are built into the vehicle. And so those really are custom cameras. And so we have to learn how to use all that. And we work with the engineers during development to make sure that it's easy enough to use for the crew because the crew is not a cinematographer. They're astronauts and they have a lot of jobs that they have to do. So we're trying to make the cameras as simple as possible to use, even though they can be pretty complicated. And then depending on the vehicle that we're on, we may have different specialized cameras. So on the International Space Station, for instance, we use a thermal infrared camera, which is very, very different than any camera, any visual camera that you'll ever use. because it sees a completely different part of the spectrum than what we see with our own eyes. So that takes some understanding. And we also have other things like fiberscopes that we use because sometimes we have to see behind really tight areas, like behind a panel or behind a door. and the crew can't get in there. So we use a fiberscope to go back in there. It's got a light on it so it can get light in that area and it works out pretty well. So we've got a lot of tools in our toolbox and we just use whichever one is going to give us the best result.

John Arnold

Yeah, I think the layperson might take for granted that it's not just, you know, like you see in Apollo 13 in the movie, just like one camcorder hooked up to something that there are so many different kinds of imaging needs, including, like you said, the action cameras. I assume that's like a GoPro and then the fiberscope to reach behind things. There are a lot of different use cases where imaging becomes very, very important. What's the experience like of working with vendors to create custom piece of equipment?

Paul Reichert

Yeah, you know, all the vendors are very different. Some of them really bend over backwards. And whatever we go to them with, they make it happen. And it's really impressive. And sometimes the development can take a few years to make and get the way we need it. So for instance, one of the cameras that we're taking to the moon with us and the crew is going to use on the lunar surface, It's called the HULC, the Handheld Universal Lunar Camera, and you can find it on the web. There's some information out there about it. But we had to actually do quite a few hardware and software modifications because of the effects of radiation on the hardware. And then also we needed the firmware to do very specific things when the crew's on the lunar surface.

John Arnold

That's fascinating. You mentioned this before when we were talking about the Flight Operations Directorate. How does your role and your team's role figure into mission support once astronauts are no longer on Earth.

Paul Reichert

Yeah, once they launch, that's when the real fun starts, because now it's for real. And they launch, and as soon as they get on board or up on orbit, which takes about 10 to 12 minutes, that's when we're on console and in the Mission Control Center. And if the crew has any problems with any of their cameras or imagery operations, we're there tech support on the ground to help them out. We pretty much support the entire mission. So like for Artemis 2, it's a 10-day mission. We'll be in the control center pretty much every single day when the crew's awake. So there's, on my team, there's two of us. So one has the first shift, the second person has the second shift. And then the third shift is when the crew is sleeping, so we're sleeping at the same time. So once they're up on orbit, we have, like I talked about earlier, we have the timeline where they have all of their imagery activities amongst all their other activities that they're doing. But sometimes during the mission, we have things go on that we need to get imagery that we weren't expecting. It could be for any kind of reason. It could be a piece of hardware broke, or it could be, “Hey, we had a micrometeor strike on the window. We got to get a picture of that because it took a big chip out of the window and we want to make sure it's safe and the crew is going to be safe.” So we have to, usually we have procedures that are very, very close or already able to allow the crew to set up the camera to take that kind of imagery.

But sometimes we have to write brand new procedures right on the spot and then uplink them to the crew so that they can use them. you just never know what's going to happen in spaceflight. When you're out there going around the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour, even something the size of it. of a pea traveling really, really fast could do a lot of damage. And then of course, once they're off to the moon, we really have to keep them safe because we can't just come back home in a couple of hours. We're on that mission for at least several days. And so sometimes we have to do things during the mission, but a lot of times what we have on board already is good enough and we just direct the crew to use a certain procedure to get that imagery.

John Arnold

It is staggering to think about the speed flying around the earth like that, and it's a sobering thought to think of the responsibility. In your role, once you're on console, are you also helping do image analysis once they're sending things back, helping the engineers and everyone around you to look at imagery and figure out what they're looking at exactly?

Paul Reichert

So while I'm pretty good at analyzing imagery and making measurements and doing things like that, like say they had a micrometeoroid strike on a window, that needs to be measured. The depth of it needs to be measured, all that. But we actually, at NASA, we have a group called the Image Science and Analysis Group, and that's what their job is, is they have the tools to be able to make very precise measurements and do all kinds of math to figure out how safe this is or Is this gonna be a real problem? Is the crew okay? Or do we need to turn the ship around? Do we need to get the crew home? But yeah, they're the ones that get the imagery and do all the analysis and then report to our management team that makes the final decision. So from my seat, my job is really to get the crew to capture the imagery in the right way and to get the imagery that can be analyzed.

John Arnold

Another thing that people take for granted is how collaborative and comprehensive something like spaceflight is. I use the word a lot and I say it a lot, but it is fascinating. It's just mind-blowing to me. You've mentioned a few of them. What are some challenges that astronauts might encounter? You mentioned micrometeors or radiation exposure. What are some other challenges?

Paul Reichert

Yeah, so from a photography perspective, the vehicle itself is not built as a photography studio or a video studio, right? It's built as a spaceship. And so we have to be able to use that space. Now, some vehicles like the International Space Station have a lot of space. Right. You can, I mean, it's like a mansion in there. But the Orion vehicle, when you put four people on that vehicle and you're on it for 10 days, there's really not much space in there. You could probably only put about six or seven people total And it would be like a phone booth. I mean, it's that small. So when you're trying to do things like, hey, we have to do a public affairs event where all four people have to be in the field of view. Wow. Before the flight, we had to figure out what lenses do we have to fly to be able to get that field of view? Where do we put the camera? Where's the crew go? All of those things have to be thought about. And then it's not an empty vehicle. There's lots of stuff in there. There's all kinds of equipment, suits, seats, all kinds of things.

So we have to work with the crew to make sure that they're in a good spot where they can be to do this public affairs event and make sure it's gonna work out okay. Other things are, you know, like when they go around the moon. We call it the lunar flyby. They're going to be flying by the moon for a handful of hours, and they're going to be on the far side, which we never get to see with human eyes. We have satellites and things that go around it, but we never get to see it with human eyes. The last time we've seen it with human eyes was over 50 years ago on Apollo.

So the crew has to take pictures of the moon of the far side to document it for the science team. And lo and behold, they didn't put the windows in a very convenient spot. So the vehicle has to be positioned in a very particular way so that the windows are pointed at moon or at the right part of the moon. And then the crew has to kind of wedge themselves in there with the camera to take those pictures. Now, we're going to be kind of far away from the moon on Artemis II. We're going to be a few thousand miles away. So we have to use pretty big lenses to get a decent resolution in our pictures. And so that's not always easy. So we practice that a lot. We practice it several times with the crew in. We have mock-ups at the Johnson Space Center of the Orion capsule. And we go in there and we actually, one of the coolest things we've ever done in my career here, is the building is massive. It's like 30 or 40 feet tall. We actually have like a 10-foot inflatable moon that we blow up and we hang it from the ceiling outside the window so that the crew can actually practice taking pictures of the moon. And they can, we place the moon about as far away as it would be as if you were looking at it from several thousand miles away or whatever distance we're gonna be at, and so they get to really do hands-on practice. And that is going to, I think, pay big dividends in a couple months here.

John Arnold

Oh, that's so exciting. In preparation for this, we were talking with our colleague, Carrie Caroon, about an article she had written and something that you'd been asked before, and that is the importance of imaging in these missions, either during flyby like you were just talking about or touching down on the lunar surface. Would you expound for our audience about why gathering these images is so important?

Paul Reichert

Yeah, so We've already talked about how the far side of the moon has not been seen by human eyes in 50 plus years. Right. And so humans, we can always fly a satellite around the moon, but really humans have very, we can pick very particular targets and very particular angles when we take photos. So it's different than a satellite. But one of the really interesting things that I found out in the past few years was that the pictures for the science team to try to figure out how things happened on the moon, the history of the moon, why rocks are where they are, why the geology is the way it is on the moon. Of course, we can always bring back samples, limited samples, maybe a couple hundred pounds of samples when we actually land on the moon and come back. But from the science team perspective, that only gives them half the puzzle. The other half of the puzzle is the imagery. Because they can bring a rock back and they can analyze the material of the rock. They can say, “This is what it's made out of.” But what they can't tell you is why was it where you picked it up? Why was it there? What was around that area? And so that's where the imagery is really important. It's like the second piece of the puzzle to figure out the history of the moon. So from a science perspective, it's very, very important.

From an engineering perspective, engineers use the imagery to do all kinds of things, but one of the things they use it to do is to solve problems. As much as we'd love to fly our vehicle and it runs perfectly, that never happens. There's always something, right? So the imagery helps them solve problems and implement fixes for future missions.

And the other thing that the imagery really does is really what most of us see, certainly in the public, is it can really inspire the public, you know? Yeah. There's only four people that are gonna go around the moon on Artemis II, but there's eight billion people on Earth, and they're taking us with them. They are letting us in on their adventure, this great adventure of going around the moon and coming back, and what are things to come? I know growing up, for me, one of the most important images I ever saw was on Apollo 8, The very first mission that ever went around the moon and came back, they took this photo called the Earthrise. And it's where the Earth was rising above the horizon of the moon. And you see that photo, and when you look at it, you see the moon, the sunlit part of the moon, and you see the sunlit part of the Earth, and there's nothing else. It's like empty space. And you realize ... “Ph my goodness, we are out in the middle of nowhere, like that is home over there, and that's all we got.” And that is just an amazing perspective that most people had never even thought about until they saw that photo.

And so that's really inspiring the public has been one of the great things. And when I worked on the International Space Station, one of the really great things that they did up there is it's the International Space Station is like a imagery studio, it is going around the Earth 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We've had people on the space station for 25 years straight. And one of the really cool things that they do is they do time lapses up there, where they go around the earth pretty quick, but they do time lapses where they really go around the earth. And when you go around the earth and you see all the city lights floating by, and then you see lightning storms, and you see auroras, and you see all of these things, it really is quite a wonder. I mean, our planet is an amazing place. And somebody once asked me what my favorite planet was, and I always liked Saturn, you know, it's big, it's got these really cool rings, but after a handful of years of working here, I think my favorite planet is Earth because it's home, it's where I am, it's my home, and it's just a really cool perspective that we've seen over the last handful of years.

John Arnold

Well, Paul, I really appreciate you sharing all that with us, it is indeed inspiring. and inspiring to think about the role that you get to play in that. Thank you. Thank you for your perspective on that and for your passion for what it is that you do. And speaking of which, my next question, what is your favorite part of the job? What gets you really excited about what you do with NASA or just in the field of photography in general?

Paul Reichert

The thing that excites me the most is really working with the astronauts. So in our classes, our classes are very small. Typically, we have one to two students. Sometimes we have the whole crew in the same class, but it's pretty rare because they're so busy. But you really get to meet the astronauts, and they all have different skill levels. Some of them are very advanced, and some of them have only shot pictures or videos on their phone.

John Arnold

Right.

Paul Reichert

And so the thing that excites me the most is seeing somebody that comes in and doesn't know a lot about photography because they're probably an engineer or they may be a scientist or a pilot or whatever profession they had before they were an astronaut. But when they come in, I can really encourage them to see the importance of imagery, not only from an outreach perspective, but from a scientific perspective, a solving problems perspective. And by the time they're ready to fly, they understand how to get the imagery that they need to get. And even some of them take it up on their own, like some of them start becoming photographers on their own. And that's really probably the most fun thing that I see and get to do at my job.

John Arnold

Yeah, you're inspiring people to take up a new hobby. They may become the next Randy Johnson or Ken Griffey Jr., become a sports photographer on the sidelines.

Paul Reichert

They could. Interestingly enough, both of them played for Seattle, so I don't know if there's a link there.

John Arnold

Yeah, that's right. Maybe so. home of the Space Needle. So yeah, maybe there is a connection there. Well, Paul, are there any final thoughts that you'd like to leave with our listeners before I let you go?

Paul Reichert

So I grew up in upstate New York, and I like to say that I grew up about a light year away from the space program. I never thought that I would ever get to participate or even work in something like this. And so what I found out, and when I talk to kids, a lot of them will think, “I can't do that. I'm going to be a business major, or I'm going to be a communications major. I'm going to be something else.”

We need all professions here. We have, obviously, engineers and technicians. We have lots of scientists, but we also have imagery people like me and like the folks in the image science and analysis group. We have businesspeople. We have human resources. We have communications people that have to get the word out about what we're doing. We have lots of different disciplines. So if anybody has a passion for NASA and they want to work there, I guarantee you, there is a job somewhere here. There is a spot for you 'cause we need really good people that are very interested. And one of the other interesting things that you mentioned before we talked about was how many different disciplines there are within NASA, right? It's not just engineers or scientists, it's all kinds of people. And back in the Apollo days, there was a famous flight director, whose name was Gene Kranz, and if you ever watch Apollo 13, he was a pretty prominent figure.

John Arnold

Yeah, Ed Harris in the vest.

Paul Reichert

Ned Harris, yeah. And one of the most famous things that he said is somebody asked him about his team. And he said, you know, the interesting thing about our team is that we have these individuals that are amazing. They have all kinds of talents and they are very advanced in what they can do. But our team is greater than the sum of all of those individual parts. And that's why we succeed. And I still hold that. That's one of my favorite things that I think about when I work here is because even though I may be talented at certain things, I can't do a lot of things that we do. And so all of us together is what makes this great.

John Arnold

It's true. truly a staggering achievement, the teamwork required to pull off a successful mission. And I thank you for sharing just a little bit about what it is that you do and can't wait to see the images that come from the mission in the next couple of months after it launches. We hope, fingers crossed. And thanks so much for your time, Paul.

Paul Reichert

Yeah, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it.

John Arnold

I'm glad to hear it.

CONCLUSION

A thousand words indeed. Maybe more!

We cannot thank Paul Reichert enough for his time and sharing about his passion and the fantastic work he is doing as part of KBR’s IMOC contract with NASA working with the Artemis program.

If you haven’t seen the photos yet, again, you can see them at nasa.gov/gallery and click on the “Lunar fly-by” section. The photos of the earthset and the full shot of our little blue and green dot are awe-inspiring.

A special thanks also to my colleague Carri Karuhn for helping get this episode off the ground.

If you like what you heard today and want to learn more about KBR’s work with NASA and other government agencies, you can head over to KBR.com.

And if you have an idea for an episode or want to give us a holler, feel free to email us at inorbit@kbr.com.

I don’t have to tell you that the world feels heavy right now.

It seems like there a lot of superficial, artificial forces dividing us.

But as Artemis 2 pilot Victor Glover said from out in the vastness of space, …

“… this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are and that we are the same thing. And that we got to get through this together.”

So to all of you listening out there, thank you for stopping by and for keeping us in YOUR orbit.

Be kind to each other, and take care.