The Art in the Earthlight
Polaris Dawn, from the furthest orbit since the Apollo era, is championing on an astronaut mainstay: Creating Art in Space
“I see Earth! It is so beautiful!”
Yuri Gagarin, first human being in space
In the beginning, of humankind migrating out to space, there was Art. And it was good.
The first person to go to space was Yuri Gagarin in 1961. Gagarin, a pilot, was wonderstruck by what he saw from orbit, constantly reporting from his 108-minute orbital flight on “the beauty” of the Earth from space.
It was Alexei Leonov, famous performer of the first spacewalk ever, March 18, 1965, and himself an artist, who was mindful enough to bring colored pencils with him to orbit. This simple act would lead to a tradition that today has come informs and defines what it means to be human and in space. Leonov, selected as a pilot, would create the first art in space.
Orbital Sunrise
As a young man in the Soviet Union in the late-1940’s, Leonov’s goal was to be an artist. He got accepted to art school. Financial hardship eventually forced Leonov to abandon his dreams of being an artist and switch to training as a pilot. Nonetheless, in the evenings after his daily pilot training, he would return to art school to continue his study of art.
Leonov’s discipline and passion would later go on to save his life as well as to be to all humanity’s reward and pleasure.
After completing his pilot training and excelling in that career, Leonov was eventually tapped to be a cosmonaut. As is well known today, on his mission to space with co-pilot Pavel Belyayev on Voskhod 2, cosmonaut Leonov would become the first human being to perform a spacewalk.
That spaceflight of Leonov and Belyayev’s is today the stuff of aerospace legend. Simply put, it was one harrowing moment after another.
In space when Leonov infamously experienced catastrophic failure of his pressure suit, it was the cosmonaut-artist’s creative mind and disciplined manner that enabled him to escape what could have been his death. In an actual nightmare scenario, Leonov’s spacesuit had over-pressurized like a balloon. He was floating inside it. Worse, it would no longer allow him to return into the spacecraft’s inflatable airlock.
Employing a remarkable creativity and conviction, Leonov paused, then reversed out his situation by dangerously releasing pressure from his spacesuit through a valve, From there, he ainstakingly worked himself in the now too-loose EVA suit wrong-ways first back into the space capsule.
And that is the notorious adventure of Leonov’s spacewalk. The full story is here. It is critical, of course, because without it what came next may never have happened at all.
What came next is Leonov’s contribution to the culture of humanity in space: Leonov created art in space.
When Leonov found himself safe inside the spaceship (and reunited with his now calming, less panicked co-pilot), instead of being tired out from his very real brush with oblivion, the cosmonaut-artist found himself deeply moved by the majesty of the moment and his unique perspective as one of the earliest humans to bear witness to the whole of Earth from space.
Duly inspired, Leonov unwrapped the small treasure he had carried with him on the inside of his astronaut suit sleeve. It was a box of colored pencils.
Upon completing his now historic spacewalk, Leonov extracted the pencils from inside the sleeve of his EVA spacesuit, took a pad of paper, and while experiencing a sunrise coming across the Earth from space, he created art.
The resulting simple work, “Orbital Sunrise,” is as important and poignant as any piece of art in the history of all humanity.
No one has better explained the importance of Leonov’s simple but exquisite artwork than YouTube vlogger John Green:
To paraphrase Hank Green on Alexei Leonov’s “Orbital Sunrise” work, Leonov’s space-made art was the first to create connection with an experience from an exclusive and essential vantage point not available to most. As we would come to discover, cosmonauts and astronauts who are artists create an essential connection between ourselves and the very miracle of the existence of existence, the universe itself.
Yet, as with most innovation and advances of the humanities, it is in hindsight that we can now see clearly the cultural significance and human merit of Leonov’s art and artistry.
The Earthrise Photo
Three years after Leonov’s spacewalk, on December 24, 1968, NASA Astronaut Bill Anders would be the next artist in space to archetypically impress upon the world the merit of art by humans in space.
The Earthrise Photo, as it is now best known, in addition to being a breathtaking work of art, is a single photograph that poignantly and powerfully captures the totality of our entire Earth from the never before seen perspective of the orbit of the moon — the astronauts of Apollo 8 were, of course, the first humans to orbit the moon.
Here is how it happened:
Immediately upon its release to the world by NASA, the Earthrise Photo was recognized for its capacity to inspire and awe. Around the globe, the photo seemingly caught the imagination of every person who viewed it.
Today, The Earthrise Photo is broadly recognized as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.”
This is it:
Ellen Ochoa performing Vivaldi on flute
In 1993, on her first trip to space as mission specialist on space shuttle Discovery STS-56 mission, Ellen Ochoa became the first astronaut who was Latina to go to space.
Three additional Space Shuttle flights would follow — including STS-96, the first time a space shuttle docked with the International Space Station. Ochoa later went to be the second-ever female director of the Johnson Space Center. Most recently, for her life work and contributions Ochoa was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
No less enduring, however, is the contribution to the canon of space art that the astronaut-engineer made on her first flight to space.
On STS-56, Ochoa, a classical flutist of 25 years, gave a performance of a Vivaldi’s Four Seasons’ Spring.
To date there has been only one short piece of footage seen of Ochoa’s space performance, the video of her playing on the flute that she brought with her aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. Ochoa’s earnest rendition of the piece she chose to play imparts the snippet with a quality of something rare and special.
Despite its brevity, the captured footage is an ode to the expression of love and music. Open-hearted and sublime, the short clip evokes a longing for Ochoa’s full performance of the popular classical music favorite. Like all the best performances this is what lives on to continue to inspire.
Here is astronaut Ellen Ochoa’s brief and excellent performance on flute in space aboard Space Shuttle Discover:
Painting in Space with Watercolor that Floats
While images and video of space, and of astronauts and life in space, continued to contribute to a body of space art for another two decades, arguably the next major milestone of art created in space again happened discretely. It was in 2009, when NASA astronaut Nicole Stott, who upon facing an exciting and lengthy stay aboard the International Space Station, chose to bring watercolors, brushes, and paper to paint with her to space.
“I’ve always enjoyed painting, and arts and crafts,” remembers Stott. “But it was one person- Mary Jane Anderson — who, before I flew to space, reminded me that I would be living and working there for several months, and so I should think carefully about what the personal items were that I would take with me. In addition to mementos like pictures of my family and friends, I started to think about my time and what I wanted to do with any free time I might have while I was there- so I went and bought a little watercolour kit, with the idea of painting what I would see out of the window.”
The impact of Stott’s artwork on her own life would come to be profound.
After leaving NASA in 2015, Stott went on to co-found the Space Suit Art Project.
The Space Suit Art Project creates replica space suits using more than 600 stitched together hand-painted fabric swatches of original paintings and art by pediatric cancer patients as well as astronauts and cosmonauts.
Here is one of the four Space Suit Art space suits, “UNITY”, at the International Space Station:
“The Space Suit Art Project is the most meaningful project I’ve ever been apart of,” says Stott. “The power and inspiration of the artwork that each of these kids are producing is overwhelmingly impressive. I’m in awe of the very positive impact I see on everyone participating.”
Then in 2018, Stott co-founded the Space for Art Foundation, the organization which is now in charged of the Space Suit Art Project. The Space for Art Foundation gained worldwide attention in 2021 when it was selected by Blue Origin’s Club for the Future to receive a $1 million dollar grant. Space for Art has now brought their mission of art and wellness to over 180 countries around the globe, reaching thousands of student “artonauts” in that time.
In fact, astronaut-artist Stott’s clear-headed and heart-filled championing, filled as it is with real insight on how marrying space technology and creativity is for the good of all humanity, serves as an excellent primer to what wellness the synthesis of space and art brings to Earth:
And recently, Nicole and Chris Stott debuted “Space For Art”, their documentary on the Space for Art Foundation’s expanding mission of uniting a planetary community of children who are drawn to space through “the awe and wonder of space exploration and the healing power of art.”
Space Oddity
In 2013, art in space took another leap with the singular performance and music video of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” aboard the International Space Station by Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield.
In the video, you can see the actual Larrivée Parlor guitar that Hadfield used to perform and record the song in space. The first guitar in space, the Parlor guitar had found its home on the ISS since being brought up on a Space Shuttle 2001. Hadfield, used the Parlor guitar to write and record the first musical recordings in space as well as the first music video in space.
Described by David Bowie himself as “possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created,” the song and video became an international sensation.
Human and personal, a fitting tribute to his own half-year in space aboard the ISS, Hadfield’s rendition of “Space Oddity” connected heart, art, and Earthlings to the awe of space life.
Hadfield’s performance in space of David Bowie’s masterpiece “Space Oddity” is inspiring, contemporary, and timeless:
The Art in the Earthlight
In addition to being mission pilot for Inspiration4, Dr. Sian Proctor is the first person select to go to space specifically as an artist.
After having trained for space for the greater part of her life and in the process becoming the most famous analog astronaut in the world (she founded the annual Analog Astronaut Conference), even going so far as becoming a NASA astronaut finalist in 2009, it was her afro-futurist art and poetry that earned Dr. Proctor her seat to space.
Dr. Proctor was selected to space as mission pilot of Inspiration4 all-civilian orbital spaceflight on the strength of the world’s response to her poem, “Space2Inspire”.
Subsequently, Dr Proctor’s definitive reading of “Space2Inspire” from orbit around the Earth is itself a victory. It is as though in order to breathe and come to life, the poem needed to be declared in space by the poet herself:
One stanza of the poem stands out in particular, “We have a moment to seize the light, Earth from space — both day and night”.
The evocative line was prescient. Becasuse as it was, in space and in orbit, the astronaut-poet-geoscientist got to be the first to recognize and give name to a breath-taking spectacle of planetary science.
As she and the Inspiration4 crew opened the hatch to present themselves before the spaceship’s great cupola window to space and the Earth, Dr. Proctor beheld the process of pure sunlight being transformed and reflected back to space by the atmosphere of the planet itself.
At that moment, as an ephemeral brilliance practically poured into the SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship, the brilliance filled the compartment and bathed its occupants with a familiar, nurturing natural light. It was the light of the sun, unceasingly transformed by the atmosphere of the Earth, relentlessly issuing upwards, outwards, and into the spacecraft.
As a poet and geoscientist, she immediately recognized this unique and different light for what it was, and gave name to it.
Beyond scale and perspective, remarkable to every astronaut beholding the Earth from space, this was specifically what catalyzed what is known as the Overview Effect.
It was the light of our lives on Earth, seen from above the Earth.
This is what Dr. Sian Proctor named Earthlight.
And Dr. Proctor captured the specific moment live.
Cueing up Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra (most famously known as the opening theme music to Kubrick’s science-fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey), Proctor captures and documents what many consider to be the most personal and human moment of the entire Inspiration4 journey to space: It was her crew mate’s rapt expressions where upon removing the cover of the Crew Dragon’s cupola they behold the Earth from space.
It was the moment the Earth-reflected and atmosphere-refracted sunlight, the Earthlight, floods into the capsule and over the faces of the Inspiration4 crew.
It is pure and it is epiphany.
In her crew mate’s expressions which the artist captures in her 90-second video, we on Earth see ourselves. Humanity, humbled and awed by the simplest grandeur of all, beholding the miracle of existence that is the Earth, light, and life.
Dr. Proctor’s artist’s heart and science mind (the call sign given to her by I4 crewmates is “Leo” for the artist-scientist parallels they felt she shares with Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci) were given over to the perspective of being bathed in the natural sunlight light that unlike the sunlight in space transformed and informed by its contact with every part of the Mother Earth, the afro-Gaia.
Taking cues from Alexei Leonov and Nicole Stotts, artist Dr. Proctor drew and colored and joyfully painted in space, and in doing so her space art was imbued with the phenomenon and inspiration of Earthlight.
Painting in space became a transformative moment. Poet became space poet, STEAM became space STEAM, and artist became space artist.
Dr Sian Proctor’s iconic modeling of JEDI space — space that is Just, Equitable, Diverse, Inclusive — instantaneously made real by her art in the Earthlight.
And in 2024, the astronaut-poet put her remarkable experience and findings to to paper in her new book, Earthlight: The Power of EarthLight and the Human Perspective.
Polaris Dawn
Art demands benefactors.
Jared Isaacman is such a benefactor.
As commander and sponsoring benefactor of Inspiration4, which selected and carried space artist Dr. Proctor to space, and now Polaris Dawn, the debut mission for the three-mission Polaris Program, in two movements Isaacman has become the de facto herald of a Second American Space Age, one that gets it right.
The foundational pillars of Inspiration4–leadership, hope, generosity, and prosperity–are found intact in Polaris Dawn.
Polaris Dawn, like its predecessor I4, is on track to support and celebrate St Jude Children’s Hospital and the treating and defeating of cancer in children.
Notably, as with I4, Polaris Dawn is committed to Art, transforming STEM into STEAM, with the creating of art being essential to generating genuine public interest, good will, and real human connection in outer space.
Along with advancing human spaceflight for the good and wellness of the future of Earth–with the first civilian spacewalk and the debut of the new SpaceX EVA spacesuit–Isaacman and Polaris Dawn have created space for art by creating art in space.
Polaris Dawn’s crew and mission includes astronaut-author (and SpaceX lead space operations engineer) reading in space to children being treated for cancer at St Jude from her own children’s book, Kisses From Space.
Notably, Isaacman and Menon (and Poteet’s) Polaris Dawn crewmate, mission specialist and medical officer Sarah Gillis, is herself an artist.
A classically trained violinist who learned to play at a very young age from her mother, a professional violinist, Gillis is noted for her devoted commitment to the violin nearly as much as she is to space and medicine.
Excitingly and teasingly, Gillis was to be carrying her violin with her to space.
While at the onset there had no official announcement from either Polaris Program or SpaceX, it seemd highly likely (and highly anticipated) that Gillis’ would indeed be performing in space, the first violin played in space.
In true Isaacman fashion, Polaris Dawn delivered big.
Gillis did indeed play her violin in space. And what a performance it was!
Along with taking the first spacewalk by a female commercial astronaut, Polaris Dawn astronaut-violinist Sarah Gillis performed “Rey’s Theme” by composer John Williams.
Performed live in space and sent to Earth via SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, Gillis’ performance was a duet with student orchestras performing the piece around the world.
To call it successful would be an understatement. It is equal parts awesome and majesty.
Words cannot do great art justice. Here is “Rey’s Theme” performed by Polaris Dawn astronaut-engineer Sarah Gillis:
The video has been a worldwide hit across all channels. Even the historic spacewalk Isaacman and Gillis is being challenged for eyeballs by the reception given globally to Gillis’ performance.
With new space art cred firmly established in the firmament and on Earth, astronaut-violinist Sarah Gillis and Polaris Program have teamed with El Sistema US to create the curriculum A Musician’s Guide to Reaching for the Stars for educators and students to see how music has the potential to open doors and set students on many paths, “from musician to an astronaut”.
Gillis’ piece is a fitting introduction to Polaris Program’s commitment to the arts.
Space Artists and the ‘Dawn’ of a New Era
When Polaris Dawn embarked on its journey to the furthest Earth orbit in history, whereupon arriving its crew boldly spacewalked where no astronaut had spacewalked before, its four members were doing much more than opening up their spaceship’s hatch to the universe; they were opening their hearts.
In 1961, we sent out the first human being to space, a pilot. In 1965, we sent up a pilot who was an artist. Continuing onward but still slightly askew, in 1985 scientist-author and space philospher Carl Sagan famously issued an open challenge to the space programs of the world to “send a poet”. And so it was, at last in 2021 with Inspiration4, we did choose to select a poet to go to space, a poet who is an artist, a scientist, an author, and a pilot.
It was right then, 60 years after that first human being orbited the planet, as Dr. Sian Proctor went to space as an artist, that space humankind found its true North, course-corrected its path to the stars, and got it right.
The Polaris Dawn crew, having gone far away on their journey and proven to be well-secured in SpaceX EVA spacesuits, became the next emissaries for an essential and foundational element of the budding Second Space Age.
As a crew of civilian astronauts (albeit very well trained civilian astronauts) made up of representative artists whose contributions now most definitely does include creating and performing art in space, following Inspiration4, Polaris Dawn has become the second space mission of the Second Space Age to get it right.
In doing so, as beloved human beings who have lived creatively and exquisitely out among the stars, the Polaris Dawn crew are archetypes of the most beautiful, most profound, and, second only to the Earth itself, most inspired work the planet has yet produced:
It is us. Humanity.
