60 Years of NASA, Celebrating Where Art and Science Meet

To celebrate NASA’s 60th anniversary this year, the agency partnered with the National Symphony Orchestra to present a concert in Washington entitled “NSO Pops: Space, the Next Frontier.” NASA mission images complemented performances of space-inspired music in the Kennedy Center’s concert hall, including Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” (“Moonlight”), with a video of the Moon created by NASA science visualizer Ernie Wright. 

At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Wright works in the Scientific Visualization Studio, using NASA data to create accurate visuals of celestial bodies. Wright made the lunar imagery accompanying “Clair de Lune” with data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). 

Since its 2009 launch, LRO has harvested data on the Moon’s radiation, chemistry, temperature and topography. The shape of the lunar terrain is measured by LRO's laser altimeter, LOLA (Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter). “The principle behind measuring the topography of the Moon is fairly straightforward,” said Noah Petro, LRO project scientist. “We fire a laser from the spacecraft to the surface of the Moon, and measure the time it takes that pulse to go from spacecraft to surface and back.” 

The longer the laser takes to bounce back to LRO, the farther away the lunar surface. Over many years, a topographic map of the entire Moon is built up, creating the most accurate map of a celestial body’s topography ever created. Wright then uses this map and images of the Moon in the same 3D visualization software preferred by animators such as those at Pixar to make digital models. “What Ernie has done is that he drapes the images on top of the topography,” Petro said. 

Topography was Wright’s biggest challenge. “The thing about the Moon is that the shadows are everything. If you don't do that well, you've pretty much lost the game — there aren't vibrant colors like on the Earth or Jupiter or Saturn,” Wright said. 

Wright’s video displays breathtaking views of lunar landmarks, beginning with a sunrise dragging shadows across the surface and ending with sunsets lengthening the darkness along the same geography. The music, Wright said, is “melancholy, solitary and contemplative, as if you’re alone, walking through a garden in the moonlight.” The result, with serene music that breathes in time with crisp visuals, is a perspective on our Moon that Debussy could have only dreamed of when he tried to capture the essence of the body that dominates the night sky. 

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