NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Regan Geeseman records videos of science research in NASA's Weightless Wonder aircraft. Image Credit: NASA

NASA images are some of the coolest pictures around. NASA uses images and videos to highlight its missions and research. Images are used to help train astronauts to do tasks in space. Images also record and document the history of spaceflight as it happens.

NASA relies on trained photographers to take a lot of its pictures. Regan Geeseman has been a photographer and videographer at NASA for more than 15 years. He works at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Regan has taken pictures of many different things at NASA. He follows astronauts through their training and documents their activities with still images and videos. Regan has gone scuba diving to record footage of astronauts' underwater spacewalk training. Regan has been inside both the International Space Station's Destiny module and the space shuttle Discovery prior to their launch.

One of the many things Regan Geeseman does is record videos of astronaut training. Here Regan is sitting inside a shuttle simulator. Image Credit: NASA

One of his most memorable astronaut assignments was following Mercury astronaut John Glenn. Regan took photos and videos of John Glenn for six months before his flight on the STS-95 space shuttle mission in 1998. (In 1962, during Project Mercury, John Glenn became the first American astronaut to orbit Earth. His second spaceflight was 36 years later on the space shuttle.) Regan got to know the first American to orbit Earth quite well. "He was very down-to-Earth and cool," Regan said.

Regan also shoots video in support of space shuttle and space station missions. His videos have been used to help plan new ways to do things in space. He has helped coordinate sending video between astronauts in space and people on the ground. He once shot video of a job astronauts on the space station needed to do. The video was sent to the space station for the astronauts to view. "I thought that was pretty awesome my video was beamed up to the space station," he said.

Regan helps with NASA research too. One of the places where Regan records

Regan Geeseman has flown on NASA's microgravity flights many times. He is very good at moving around in weightlessness -- even going upside down! Image Credit: NASA

videos of science research is in NASA's Weightless Wonder aircraft. This is an aircraft that simulates microgravity, or weightlessness. NASA conducts research on this aircraft to see how things work differently in microgravity than on Earth. Photographers and videographers like Regan fly in the aircraft with the scientists to take photos and videos of their experiments.

Each period of weightlessness occurs during a parabola. The plane flies up toward the sky and then down toward the ground, like the up-and-down pattern on a roller coaster. During each flight the plane does between 30 and 60 parabolas. Regan has flown so many times he's experienced more than 10,000 parabolas. "When you do it a thousand times, it's still fun, but not as fun as the first time," he said.

Regan is very focused on getting the right images and videos during the weightless flights. He said the most important thing is making sure NASA gets the data it needs. "I don't think about floating about," he said. "If we have a failure or make a mistake, they don't get that data back."

Another area of research that Regan has supported is NASA's future plans to go back to the moon and beyond. He has taken photos and videos at field tests of the rovers and other robotics that are being developed for use on the moon and other planets.

Regan Geeseman took this photo of NASA's Lunar Electric Rover in the Arizona desert. Image Credit: NASA/Regan Geeseman

Regan studied radio, television and film in college. As a kid, he liked to play with electronics. His dad bought him his first video camera, and Regan wouldn't put it down. "I just started shooting video of everything just because I enjoyed it, just shooting for the sake of shooting," Regan said.

At age 10, he saw the big video cameras at his church and asked how he could do that. "I saw that camera and thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen!" Regan said.

After college, Regan was a freelance videographer. A freelance worker does jobs for many companies, instead of working for just one. Regan recorded video of professional sporting events for news channels. Covering the U.S. Open golf tournament was one of his favorite assignments. Regan moved to Houston, Texas, and worked at sporting events like the Houston Rockets and Houston Astros baseball games. He also shot video for the Monday Night Football broadcast.

Regan Geeseman uses a video camera to record the testing of a new idea for a vehicle for astronauts on the moon. The vehicle is called a lunar truck or chariot. Image Credit: NASA

He started working for NASA in 1995. "Working at NASA is kind of a lifestyle," he said. "When I grew up, I didn't really care much about NASA, and then I found out all the amazing things they're doing."

Tricks of the Trade

footage -- images recorded with a video camera. The word comes from how many feet of film are used in a recording.
shoots -- a slang term referring to taking photos or recording video

Related Resources:
NASA Images
The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth   →
What Was Project Mercury?
What Is Microgravity?
Fun in Microgravity Picture Gallery
The Ups and Downs of Water Droplets
NASA's Dropping In a Microgravity Environment Student Competition   →
NASA Exploration Analog Missions   →
Microgravity University Video   →
John Glenn Bio   →


Heather R. Smith/NASA Educational Technology Services