Documenting NASA's OSAM-1 spacecraft Integration and testing phase
A selection of photos from the OSAM-1 mission during integration and testing phase.
I take a lot of photos every day. Most of them are technical imagery used for engineering design and testing. Those photos you will never see, either due to the fact that you would not find them interesting or because they are considered controlled unclassified information (CUI). However my day job puts me in the room with very interesting people and very interesting activities. I try to photograph these things to as time allows and sometimes, these photos get approved for public release. The following photographs were all taken throughout the integration and testing phase of the On-Orbit Servicing Assembly and Manufacturing 1 Mission (OSAM-1). They have all been reviewed and approved for public release. These are not all the photos I have taken, and its not all the photos I have released. What you are scrolling through are some of my favorite photographs I have taken throughout my time with OSAM-1. Through these images you can watch the hardware be built up from a couple of circuit boards to a fully assembled spacecraft only a year of testing away from launch. Within these photos you will see the build process, but also the moments in between work when people are simply people, I like those moments especially.
OSAM-1 was a spacecraft that was designed to autonomously rendezvous with, capture, and refuel satellites that were never built to be refueled or repaired. The project was defunded by NASA due to budget constraints, a lot of the people in these photos lost their jobs because of this. The people in these photos are some of the most qualified and capable in their fields and yet, their stories are becoming more and more common each year. We never got to see our hard work launch, despite some people having been with the project for 10 years. The mission had gone through multiple changes in scope and the final year of the project was spent under the threat of cancellation. Despite this, the OSAM-1 team beat out all the odds, completing milestone after milestone to assemble the spacecraft. It broke our hearts when the order was finalized, knowing that despite those long days, and an attention to detail that can be found only at NASA, this mission was being put on the shelf.
These photos, and millions of dollars worth of hardware that are now sitting bagged up in a cleanroom are all thats left of the project until someone decides its worth picking up. personally, I thought this project was so sci-fi and cool and unique.
First batch of film processed at home
Hello everyone!
I am very excited to share my first batch of negatives processed in my garage. This process was incredible simple to do at home. The biggest challenges to overcome were the question of what to do with the chemicals after the processing, and finding a place to hang/dry the negatives when they come out of the wash.
My solution for the chemicals: I looked up the dates/times my county has home hazardous waste drop off sites, purchased a couple 2.5 gallon jugs to safely store the chems and will drop them off so they are properly disposed of.
The drying the negatives I have not found a good solution for yet… the biggest issue is the negatives started sliding out of the clips I was using. This was weird because the clips themselves are very strong! I did not expect them to slip out. So I've opted to keep them in the reel… as the 4x5 prints don't touch while in the reel. I then place the real in a cardboard box so that the negatives don't get dusty or get my pets hair stuck to them. I think in the future I may try to clear out a cabinet that they can sit in.
Without further Ado here are the first negatives. All were shot on my intrepid 4x5 camera with Nikon 150mm lens.
