Few photographers have had the access and the quality time to explore the restricted worlds of high-profile human spaceflight missions. It’s hard to even speak to the people who work on the shuttle, let alone enter the guarded astronaut culture. So it’s lucky for us (and the rest of the world) that photographer Michael Soluri managed to secure three years of access to document the astronaut crew, labor force, and one-of-a-kind tools that framed the last (and the riskiest) shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009. “Space history was unfolding and I wanted to discover the art, craft, and humanity in human and robotic spaceflight before the shuttle era came to an end,” says Soluri.
The opportunity to portray the Hubble astronaut crew began with a chance question to Mike Massimino, a veteran of the last Hubble servicing mission in 2002. “Mass,” said Soluri, “What is the quality of light really like in space?” There was a reflective pause. Then Massimino said: “Could you teach us (the crew) to make better photographs of our trip in space? Something that communicates our experiences?”
That conversation led to a crew portrait session and some photography coaching. But it also began Soluri’s relationship with the teams involved in the Hubble and space shuttle. Almost twenty of those individuals contributed essays and stories for Soluri’s book, Infinite Worlds: The People & Places of Space Exploration, published by Simon & Schuster. In them, they reflect on what it meant to extended Hubble’s ability to gather the ancient light of the unexplored universe. The book also features beautiful photos of the mission. In honor of the 25th anniversary of Hubble’s launch, Soluri has shared some of the images with us.
