Scott Wiessinger

Senior Multimedia Producer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

When art and astronomy converge, complex scientific abstractions become both understandable and emotionally evocative. Scott Wiessinger operates at that juncture, making the magic happen.

“I always want to showcase science in a way that helps people really understand what’s going on,” he says. “Science videos often pair detailed narration with semi-related images that are mainly meant to just keep the audience watching. But I try to make sure the narration and visuals both teach.”

Scott’s work has been displayed in art installations, concerts, YouTube videos, live events, wall posters, and graphics for digital science articles, sending ripples of cosmic awe all around the world.

Steeped in STEAM

While Scott currently produces astrophysics content for several NASA missions, he originally had very different plans.

“I found a trilobite fossil in my gravel driveway when I was three and decided I wanted to be a paleontologist!” he says.

Scott was certainly primed for a career as a scientist. Both his parents were naturalists who specialized in biology and animal behavior, and his grandfather taught science education at Cornell University. But Scott also had early access to the art world through his father.

“My dad was also a painter, and he created an illustrated series called Right Before Your Eyes,” Scott says. “He’d make little infographics about things like why raccoons wash their paws in the stream, and explain that they’re actually feeling their food more sensitively.”

Scott began shifting toward visual arts in seventh grade, when he was assigned a life sciences poster project he deemed much too boring. He created a video version instead and ended up loving the process.

“Instead of a stagnant poster showing the different parts of a cell, a friend and I created an Impossible Voyage style video called Cell Searchers with G.I. Joes swimming around in the cell, where different components were represented by things like basketballs and lasagna noodles,” Scott says.

He repeated the process for the next poster project and gradually found this line of work more appealing as a career.

Scott’s Path to NASA

After a gap year spent rock climbing and working at a media video store in Colorado, Scott attended Cornell as a film major with plans to go into filmmaking upon graduation. In addition to required coursework focused mainly on film theory, he took a broad range of science and humanities classes (including German, where he met his future wife in their very first college class).

Upon graduation, Scott settled nearby and did work unrelated to his major. But he continued his film work by helping his dad make natural history videos and his grandfather record physics demonstrations. Before long, he realized he could make a career out of blending science and filmmaking.

He attended Montana State University’s science and natural history filmmaking Master of Fine Arts program.

“They really preferred scientists-turned-filmmakers, so I had to take more science classes on top of the grad school load,” Scott says. “I took astronomy and a heliophysics independent study course, which I think later helped me get into NASA because it was basically the same thing I’d be doing once I got to Goddard.”

Thanks to a fellowship with the Montana Space Grant Consortium, Scott had the opportunity to create videos of sounding rockets and students doing NASA science (sometimes with “help” from his daughter, who was born just before he began his third year in the program). His thesis was a fractal-themed film that was heavy on visuals with just a little bit of on-screen text.

“I worked with a composer to create music for it, and that blend of music and visuals helped convey concepts without the need for narration,” Scott says.

After graduation, Scott received offers for two jobs on the same day — one at Goddard, which has strong ties to the MSU program, and one teaching at a community college.

“I figured I’d get some real work experience for a few years before going into teaching, so I accepted the Goddard offer,” he says. “But now it’s been 15 years, and I’m in it for the long haul!”

Virtual Voyages Through Space

At Goddard, Scott initially split his time between the astrophysics and heliophysics science divisions. The former covers all of Goddard’s small astrophysics missions, like TESS (the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope.

One of Scott’s major heliophysics projects, created with fellow producer Genna Duberstein, has been shown in Goddard’s visitor center since 2015 (though it’s currently being revamped, due to return in December 2024). Called Solarium, it showcases fiery, mesmerizing videos of the Sun captured by NASA’s SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory).

“I have this theory that we like controlled chaos, like how fireplaces are comforting and waves are fun to watch,” Scott says. “The Sun viewed in ultraviolet light is like that, and Solarium zooms in to see its chaotic, almost random motion in detail. It’s sort of spellbinding to watch the view float over the Sun and see all kinds of solar activity up close.”

Scott began working on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team in 2015, and eventually that largely supplanted his helio coverage. These days, he spends a lot of his time documenting Roman’s assembly and helping the world understand the scientific impact this mission will make after it launches by May 2027.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing Roman’s launch,” Scott says. “And I’m excited to switch from hardware to showing the science the mission will start doing and the amazing imagery it will gather once it begins observing the cosmos. That will be the payoff for all the hard work now!”

In the meantime, Scott has leaned into another creative outlet — combining music and visuals. He began by producing things like an annual SDO highlight reel. Then he worked with the Holland Symphony Orchestra for a space concert, where he selected a couple pieces of music and put together a video to accompany them.

Always trying to outdo himself, Scott then produced the first and last videos for Cosmic Cycles — a seven-part series that starts with footage of Earth and moves to the farthest reaches of space.

“This was an amazing creative experience, collaborating with other talented producers and Henry Dehlinger, the composer,” Scott says.

This time the process was reversed: he and a team made the videos, and then the composer used that to create the music. The resulting symphony was performed by the National Philharmonic in May 2023.

“I’ve always really liked the synergistic effect of the right visual with the right music,” Scott says. “By themselves they’re both good, but when you put them together they become transcendent.”

By Ashley Balzer
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.