At the same place NASA astronauts trained to go to the Moon 50 years ago, NASA researchers are working to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon in the coming years.
This series of time-lapse images highlights the nighttime beauty of the Landing and Impact Research Facility at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. In the 1960s, Apollo astronauts trained to land on the Moon here in a full-scale Lunar Excursion Module Simulator that was suspended from the giant A-frame gantry. In recent years, researchers have used the facility to conduct crash tests of aircraft. They’ve also conducted splash and drop tests of the Orion capsule, which will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry astronauts on the next mission to the Moon.
This series of time-lapse images of the facility took Langley photographer David Bowman nearly four months to shoot and edit. Bad weather, morning dew and uncooperative batteries sometimes slowed him down. But now you can revel in the nighttime beauty of a Langley landmark that continues to prove useful to researchers more than 50 years after it first opened. For the best viewing experience, watch it in full screen.
Credits: David C. Bowman