Terry White’s introduction to the arts happened at the age of 5 when he watched his mother sketching at the dinner table. He never thought that love of art would lead him to a career at NASA.
White is lead animator and illustrator for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) program at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Inspired by his mother’s talents, White asked her to teach him how to draw. His passion for drawing grew into creating and selling his own watercolor paintings. White received his diploma in graphic arts at J.F. Drake State Community and Technical College in Huntsville and he started his career as an illustrator in the aerospace industry. During a seven-year period at Boeing, he created illustrations and watercolor paintings for the Space Station Freedom Project that evolved into the International Space Station.
White started his NASA career 20 years ago. Now, creating artwork for the Artemis missions – NASA’s next era of human exploration to the Moon and eventually to Mars – is a dream come true for White.
“I have always wanted to work in the space industry, and I love what I do,” said White, who is responsible for creating 3D animations, digital 3D models, and multimedia presentations for the SLS program.
White turns technical blueprints and penciled drawings into accurate, scaled digital 3D models used for posters, infographics, engineering documents, presentations, augmented reality, websites, animations, videos, and more. A recent example of White’s work can be found on Snapchat, through the “NASA Experience” filter. This filter brings to life an augmented reality model of the SLS rocket on your phone screen, which you can view from every angle.
“My favorite model I have built thus far is the SLS rolling out of the Vehicle Assembly Building, months before the initial Artemis I rollout event occurred,” said White. “When I was working on it, I was focused on the task at hand, but when I saw the videos of the real rocket rolling out, it hit me that the challenging work I put in shows.”
The models and animations White created looked so realistic that even some SLS engineers had a hard time telling the difference between the animations of the rollout and the video of the actual rollout event in March 2022.
White works with SLS engineers to make sure the models he creates are as accurate as possible. “I love building something new that has never been attempted and making it look as real as possible,” said White. “I am always looking forward to the next project.”