Flipping through his recent book of greater than 200 photographs of Earth, or, should you are determined, the greater than 245,000 images he took during his second mission aboard the International Space Station, you get the sense that Thomas Pesquet thoroughly captured the planet.
In “The Earth in Our Hands: Photos from the International Space Station,” Pesquet, a French astronaut with the European Space Agency (ESA), curates his favorite views of our home world, showcasing its varied landscapes of each natural and human-made features. With a familiarity that only an astronaut can gain while looking down at Earth for tons of of days, Pesquet not only conveys the fantastic thing about Earth, but its fragility and the toll climate change has had on the environment.
But as complete a portrait of Earth as Pesquet was capable of capture, there was one goal that, try as he might, escaped his camera. “Machu Picchu was one which I at all times desired to take but never managed,” Pesquet, referring to the stays of the Fifteenth-century Inca citadel in southern Peru, said in an interview with collectSPACE.com. “I do not think there are numerous pictures of Machu Picchu since it is de facto small, the environment may be very green and there are at all times clouds around, so you might have to be really lucky and really good with the long lenses to get Machu Picchu.”
“Possibly next time,” he said.
Related: French Astronaut Thomas Pesquet’s Amazing Photos from Space (Gallery)
collectSPACE spoke with Pesquet in regards to the challenges of photographing Earth from space, the psychological importance to having the ability to see our planet out the window and the way he chosen the photos for “The Earth in Our Hands,” now in stores from Firefly Books.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
collectSPACE (cS): What would you say separates “The Earth in Our Hands” from other astronauts’ collections of Earth photography, corresponding to Terry Virts’ “View From Above” or Don Pettit’s “Spacebourne“?
Thomas Pesquet: I’m aware of their work, especially Don Pettit’s, Don is the one who actually (re-)invented space photography, almost. Their books were an inspiration. For a few of my shots, I began from what Don was doing after which I attempted to provide it a private take.
I believe the most important difference might be night pictures. Those other guys did some night pictures, but mostly shot within the day, I believe. I did a number of night pictures, which I actually enjoyed, ranging from time lapses and extracting some very nice frames. So I believe my book perhaps has more night pictures.
Also, one thing that I did that I believe none of those other guys did is photo collages. As a substitute of taking only one shot [of a target]. I took tons of of shots because the ISS flew over after which I sewed them back together. It’s computer assisted, but I sewed them together to provide me the best magnitude over a really wide area. So I could map the entire city of Los Angeles or the entire state of Recent York, which doesn’t slot in only one shot at that prime a magnitude.
I ended up needing NASA’s help. Those guys [on the ground] were sometimes those stitching the images back together because we do not have the computing power up there on the space station, nor the software. But I believe that is something that sets my photography apart.
cS: How did you go about culling 200 of your favorite photos from among the many greater than 245,000 you took during your second mission?
Pesquet: I did the work through the mission.
So, for instance, given the inclination of the orbital plane, there may be this one really good pass while you go diagonally from northwest to southeast across France. along Italy, through the Mediterranean along the Red Sea. It is a goldmine [for photography]; there’s every thing in that orbit, no less than for a European.
On a day, some Sunday afternoon, while you get such an orbit, you find yourself with possibly 10 SD cards with 200 to 400 pictures on each after which you might have to sort through them. When you postpone every thing until after the mission, you then’ll never do it because there’s just way too many pictures and that is way an excessive amount of work.
So every evening, I might undergo my SD cards, downlinking every thing to NASA such as you’re purported to, but then hand picking the images I liked to avoid wasting for myself on my ISS laptop. After which on the bottom after the mission, I uploaded every thing to Flickr, organizing albums geographically like North America, South America, Europe, Africa, etc., or night pictures or EVA [extravehicular activity or spacewalk] pictures after which I attempted to tag all of them, which was also a number of work, but then only 4,000 to five,000 pictures made the cut.
So once we sat down and chosen the images to create the book, we began from my Flickr account where the images are nicely sorted out and that was an enormous help. For the few pictures that were missing or when we wanted the best resolution, then I wrote to the the imagery folks at Johnson Space Center in Houston and so they were at all times so great, sending me back exactly what I wanted.
cS: How far apart would you say is the experience of seeing Earth on the pages of your book, as in comparison with seeing it out the window of the space station’s cupola?
Pesquet: There’s something that can not be captured [by the camera]. The best way sometimes I’ve tried to clarify it’s the blue of Earth isn’t only a color, it is also a light-weight — it actually glows. And that is really what it’s; it’s just a mirrored image of the daylight. Nevertheless it glows a bit like a Bluetooth LED, which is blue, but that could be a very weak comparison.
So every thing is a little bit bit like that and it’s hard to capture in an image. Night photography is very hard since you see stars and auroras after which while you click in your digital camera, that are only pretty much as good as their sensors, most of the time you bought a black or mostly black frame with just some hint of the true color. It takes a number of tampering with the camera’s settings to really get an honest picture of an aurora or sights like that.
It is also a matter of investing your time and exertions. When you take a look at the images from the start of my first mission, they’re horrible. After which they get barely higher over the course of my first mission and I picked up where I left off on the second mission. I only like the images from the tip of my second mission, which is after 400 days in space taking pictures. I only then finally got to sort of like the images I took.
So I might say with exertions, good cameras and likewise some post processing, because the images you get, they’re a bit hazy. There is a grayish tint to the atmosphere and also you eyes don’t really see that however the camera captures it. So the colours are less flamboyant, less contrasted then they’re in real life. So it takes a little bit little bit of adjusting your pictures [to match what you see].
When you do those three things right, which we tried to do within the book, then I might say you are only missing 10 percent. But should you just click an image out the window after which post it on social media without anything, it will be gray, the colours are going to be horrible and you then’re missing no less than 50 percent of what your eyes actually did see.
cS: From what you write within the book and the way you you speak about Earth photography, there may be a way that having the power to look out the window at our home world is a very important factor, psychologically, for having the ability to stay in space for long durations. On a visit to Mars, nonetheless, there’s going to be a big swath of time where Earth goes to be too small to see and all you’ll have is the blackness of space out the window. How hard do you think that that’s going to be should you do not have Earth photography as a pastime to fill the months it will take to get to Mars?
Pesquet: I believe it’s gonna be super hard truthfully.
The trip goes to be uncomfortable. It is not going to be the ISS flying to Mars, it will be a much smaller volume. I often call it, and it isn’t exactly accurate, however it’s 500 days in a Fiat 500.
It is also going to be difficult because you should have to maintain busy, right? When you should not busy with work or photography or whatever, you then start eager about your loved ones. You begin eager about what you are missing. I’ve seen it occur.
There was a Progress launch mishap just after our Soyuz launch on my first mission. The Progress blew up, so my Russian colleagues they did not have the entire cargo, the entire science experiments and every thing that they needed to follow at work. So for just a few weeks, their workload was actually really low, or much lower than what it often is, and people guys were taking naps, watching movies and things like that and so they hated it. That is after they began to discuss their families and we saw how they missed them.
So do you don’t need that on a mission to Mars
The view of Earth, which is more specific to the query, is, at the identical time, I believe psychologically reassuring. It’s home. It’s where everybody is that you already know, where your folks and families are, but it’s also about safety, right? We on the ISS, despite the fact that we’re really super high, 400 and a few kilometers, we’re still very near Earth. If something goes mistaken, you may come back down.
Once I saw the images from the Artemis I mission behind the moon, with the capsule within the foreground and the moon just a few dozen thousand kilometers underneath after which Earth like 384,000 kilometers [240,000 miles] behind it as a extremely tiny ball, I used to be considering, “Wow, there’s amount of risk involved.” Because if something goes mistaken, your navigation system higher be working, your propulsion system higher be working because you are not going to glide all the way in which back to the planet.
So I believe, “Now we’re in deep waters.” Now whatever happens, whether it’s days or even weeks or months from a return, it will be something to cope with. Those guys and ladies who we send to Mars, they’ll should be psychologically strong. They can be busy. We’ll work out a way, however it’s going be a distinct sort of animal from just flying on the ISS.
cS: So with in mind, do you should be able to jot down a sequel to “The Earth in Our Hands”? Possibly something like, “The Moon Beneath Our Feet: Photos from the Lunar Gateway”?
Pesquet: I might love to try this, absolutely. I believe for the moon, though, it’ll be mostly black and white. I even have to up my black and white game. I attempted to take some black and white shots on the ISS, but I believe Earth is so beautiful and so colourful, it’s actually a shame to take black and white pictures of the planet.
But yeah, we’re so lucky to live in an age when there’s an Artemis program and we’re going and Europe is an element of it. Hopefully, European astronauts — fingers crossed — but perhaps it isn’t me, who knows? There is a handful of candidates immediately. But yeah, before 2030 hopefully one among us goes to be on the surface of the moon.
And now photography is an element of the job. That is the way in which I see it. You’ve to share your view, you might have to bring back some pictures. It’s just like the web, if there are not any pictures, it doesn’t exist and it does exist so we want to bring back some good pictures.
I’ve actually done three weeks of [lunar] geology training, the last one among which in Lanzarote, which is a volcanic island. It looks just like the moon on Mars with very barren landscapes. When you squint your eyes, you think that you are on the moon. I got to play with the camera that NASA is planning to equip crews who will step on the moon. It’s digital camera-based, but its frame, a few of its buttons and its firmware have been upgraded to make it usable with pressurized gloves on the moon.
It was exciting to provide my feedback as an ISS Sunday photographer and to get my hands on the camera, walk around and movie myself on the moon. Hopefully it happens sooner or later, but when I’m not going, someone higher bring home some good pictures in order that I can feel like I used to be there, too.