Live From Space - Smarter Every Day 303

0:00 Hey, it's me, Destin.

0:00 Welcome back to Smarter Every Day.

0:02 I'm very excited to share this video with you because it

0:05 means a lot to me to see how it's all played out.

0:09 Years ago, I met a guy named Don Pettit.

0:11 Don is an astronaut, and he is an incredibly curious person,

0:16 a childlike love for the unknown and discovery,

0:19 and he's just an amazing guy to talk to.

0:23 Well, Don and I have talked over the years and done some experiments together,

0:26 and I've learned through the years that he is

0:29 the mentor astronaut for a guy named Matthew Dominic.

0:32 Now, the schedules have lined up so that Don Pettit

0:35 and Matthew Dominic are in space at the same time.

0:38 And that's special because it's not often

0:41 that a mentor astronaut will fly with their mentee.

0:44 So this little overlap in time is

0:46 a very specific moment that I wanted to capture.

0:50 And so I wanted to do an interview with them.

0:52 Now, what's so special about this interview

0:55 is Don and Matthew are both accomplished photographers,

0:58 well respected for their ability to take incredible photos from space.

1:03 And we're going to get to do an interview with them in the cupola.

1:06 It's awesome.

1:06 It's like we're in the cupola with them.

1:09 We're squished in there and there's elbow room only.

1:12 And so you feel like you're up in the cupola,

1:14 and we get to see what it's like to take photos from space.

1:18 And on top of that, you got their relationship,

1:20 and you can tell that they're just so happy to be there.

1:22 So this is a really special interview, and I hope you enjoy it.

1:26 I'm really excited that at some moments in there,

1:28 I was able to talk them in to letting the camera float around.

1:31 That just adds to the weightlessness feel.

1:33 I just love it.

1:34 So all right, let's go to the space station,

1:37 and let's talk to Don Pettit and Matthew Dominic,

1:41 and learn how to take photos from space.

1:46 Okay, we're about to connect to the space station.

1:49 We're going to see Matthew and Don.

1:52 We're going to see what's going on up in the cupola.

1:55 [Mission Control] 10 seconds.

1:56 Standby for that call.

2:03 [Matt] We're ready for the event.

2:08 How's it going, guys?

2:10 Check, check.

2:11 Going great.

2:12 How do you hear us?

2:14 Lima, Charlie.

2:16 [Don] We hear you loud and clear, even through the vacuum of space.

2:23 [Destin Chuckling] [D] That's quite the- [M]

2:26 Loving life hanging out the couple with Don.

2:28 Check it out the view.

2:32 [D] That's quite the setup you have there.

2:34 I just figured our delay out,

2:34 so I'm going to have to be quiet after I say something.

2:37 I am noticing that you've got really good

2:41 exposure on what looks to be night going away.

2:46 Is that correct?

2:48 [M] Absolutely, yeah.

2:49 Just a couple of minutes ago, one of my favorite things happened.

2:51 The sun just rose up in front of us,

2:54 and we went through dramatic lighting changes.

2:56 We actually had the shutter over here in front of us on this side.

2:58 We had closed, so we weren't burning our eyeballs out.

3:00 Then just before you called, we were able to open it up as the sun

3:04 went down on the other side of space station.

3:06 Yeah, the dynamic lighting is pretty impressive.

3:10 [D] I'm going to level with you.

3:11 This is what's going on here.

3:12 I saw the interview you did with Scientific American in the cupola, Matt.

3:17 I thought it was incredible.

3:18 I happen to know that you guys are actual real-life on-Earth friends.

3:25 The fact that you are together in space and you're both astrophotographers,

3:29 this is just the coolest thing, and you both look like kids in a candy store.

3:33 Is it as cool to be there together as I hoped it would be for you?

3:40 [Don] Yeah.

3:41 Sometimes we have to focus on what the mission is

3:45 and not what we would like to charge off and do.

3:50 [M] It's been an absolute blast up here.

3:52 We have our jobs that we do during the day that we're supposed to do,

3:55 and we actually do do them.

3:57 But going off and hopping into the cupola and taking

4:00 pictures or learning a lot of stuff from Don.

4:02 Before I launched, Don and I spent a lot of time in his backyard,

4:05 and he was explaining some of the things you need to know,

4:08 or I'd borrow a camera,

4:09 and Don would show me a few things on the camera and give me a head start.

4:12 It's awesome that just the way things worked out,

4:14 Don's up here on the space station, and we're having a blast.

4:17 [D] Just so everybody understands,

4:19 it's my understanding that Don, you are Matthew's astronaut mentor,

4:22 and so you had to teach him all the little astronaut things

4:26 that little astronauts learn to do when they first learned to astronaut.

4:30 [Destin breaks out laughing] [Don] We end up teaching each other because

4:39 Matthew's got these amazing skills that he came in from his background,

4:45 and we're like two stones that are rubbing

4:50 the angular edges off as we go through life.

4:55 It's a blast learning from Don.

4:57 We both have the same giant curiosity about the world around us.

5:01 We both have different backgrounds,

5:02 but the same immense set of childhood curiosity about everything around us.

5:08 [D] What I want to know...

5:08 Yeah, go ahead, Don.

5:09 [Don] Hold it, but childhood curiosity, some of us haven't even grown up yet.

5:18 [D] It's an open secret in the whole NASA community that, Don,

5:25 you've had a list that you've been writing to take

5:28 up to station for a really, really long time.

5:32 My question is, Matthew, have you gotten to see the list of the little

5:35 experiments he's going to do in his off time?

5:37 [M] Saturday morning science is going to be amazing.

5:41 Don's got a lot of cool experiments lined up.

5:43 I've seen just a glimpse, but I think the whole world is going to grow

5:46 and learn from what he's going to do up here.

5:50 [D] That's awesome.

5:51 With your permission...

5:52 Go ahead, Don.

5:57 [Don] I was just going to say the best is yet to be.

6:01 I think that has something to do with Shakespeare, but it also applies to orbit.

6:08 [D] I'm excited for you guys.

6:09 Okay, so here's the question.

6:11 We're in a rare situation where we have two

6:14 really good photographers in the cupola with a downlink,

6:18 and you have video cameras there.

6:20 My question is, do you have the ability to move the camera

6:23 around the cupola on this little talkie-talk that we're doing here?

6:26 Matt, I know Don might not be able to do

6:28 this, but I know you probably figured it out, right?

6:32 [Don] Yeah, Matt and I had a bet as to whether

6:35 you were going to ask that, and I thought, No, Destin isn't going to ask that.

6:43 [D] All right, so with your permission, I want to know,

6:48 I want to explore the space of the cupola.

6:51 This is something I've wanted to do my whole life.

6:53 Don, in fact, I don't know that you remember, the day we met,

6:56 you were in the mockup of the cupola in building nine.

6:59 Do you remember that?

7:02 [Don] I remember that, and yes, I do.

7:06 What they do want to point out, the cupola is a pretty tiny, cramped place,

7:11 and sometimes we've had up to six people in here, but looking at special events.

7:20 But you need a real wide angle lens in order

7:24 to gather the scope of what's going on here.

7:28 The video camera we have, we've got a wide angle adapter on it,

7:32 but it is not the same field of view

7:36 that you can get on a standard mirrorless camera.

7:43 [D] Got it.

7:45 Do you have your Z9 handy?

7:46 Do you guys have that thing and the wide angle?

7:48 What wide angle lens are we talking about?

7:55 [Don] Okay, we've got this lens is a zoom lens that we use for daytime imagery,

8:03 and it's fairly slow.

8:05 It's like a F-F-4-5.

8:08 This is a 24-millimetre F 1.4 lens.

8:13 We use this a lot for night time imagery.

8:17 Here is one on a mount...

8:23 Right here.

8:24 [D] Oh, yeah.

8:27 [Don] This is a 50 millimeter F1.2 lens.

8:33 And It's not an ultra-wide angle lens.

8:36 It's kinda considered a normal lens for this format of camera.

8:40 But man, it really sucks in the light and allows us to do night time imagery.

8:47 [D] Is that a remote shutter you have there?

8:51 [M] Yeah, exactly.

8:52 [Don] A cable release.

8:54 [M] This is fun to handle a camera.

8:56 One of the really cool parts I enjoy about using a camera up

8:58 here is if I need another I just leave the microphone where it's at.

9:01 I could just talk into the microphone.

9:03 It's like it's like I have three hands.

9:04 But Don and I have been really having a blast with this 50 millimeter lens.

9:08 It's an F1.2, so it's really fast.

9:10 Takes in a huge...

9:12 It's just a giant light bucket, and we've been on different shifts.

9:15 Don, every morning has been taking pictures of the comet,

9:17 and then late at night,

9:18 I've been taking pictures of the comet that we've had going

9:20 on right now and streaming them down to Mission Control as well.

9:23 So we've been having a blast doing that.

9:26 [D] Okay, so what I want to do is I want to get a feel for the space.

9:30 You have that wide angle on the Z9.

9:32 You have the big boy on the Z9.

9:36 Can you just flip?

9:38 Can you turn the camera on and record video of this, of the Z9?

9:43 Can you record Z9 video while we're talking?

9:48 [M] We might be able to do something like that later,

9:50 but the camera we have right now is the XF.

9:52 We have a camcorder, an XF 705 on a downlink.

9:57 It's hardwired into space station.

9:58 We have a cable running back down into node three,

10:00 we call it, and that goes into a coder.

10:02 We're actually on a cable with the camera we're currently using.

10:05 The Z9s are predominantly our steel cameras that we use,

10:08 and we do have some cool 16 millimeter fish eye lenses.

10:12 We have an 8 millimeter fish eye lens that we put on the Z9,

10:15 but we have a little spinny wide angle attachment

10:18 that we put on the camera we're currently on.

10:19 It's actually fun.

10:20 You can spin it off and you can see the perspective

10:23 change real time there for the camera we're currently using.

10:26 [D] Oh, that's awesome.

10:28 Oh, yeah, that's it.

10:29 That's really cool.

10:29 [M] Yeah.

10:30 See if you can...

10:31 [Don] You hold the camera.

10:32 [M] See if you can do a good spin, Don.

10:33 It's fun to spin it off real nice.

10:37 There we go.

10:38 Now you can see this lens spinning off the front of the camera.

10:40 We have a good time with the tools we have available.

10:44 [D] Oh, that's great.

10:45 That's awesome.

10:46 So there's a few questions I had.

10:48 When I saw your Scientific American interview,

10:50 which was great, you were talking about these new filters.

10:53 And so what I'm wondering, these filters on the window,

10:57 most of the photos I've seen of space station,

11:00 of the Earth, the ground has been blown out.

11:03 But these filters allow you to be able

11:05 to see you in the cupola and the Earth, correct?

11:11 [Don] Yeah.

11:12 I borrowed an idea that the big boys in Hollywood use

11:18 when they do filming indoors with windows and brightly-lit scenes outside.

11:26 You want them all balanced.

11:29 The intensity is just too great to record with standard equipment.

11:35 What the big boys do is they put neutral density filters as a thin

11:41 film over the windows to balance

11:43 the intensity between the outside and the inside.

11:46 And that's what we've done here.

11:48 I talk NASA into cutting some four stop ND filters to fit the cupola windows,

11:58 and we can put em up.

12:00 It takes a few minutes to put them up,

12:04 but it allows video, balanced video, to be done in the cupola.

12:08 It's really bright outside.

12:10 And by cutting the intensity down four stops,

12:14 four EV, that's a factor of, gosh, 16, right?

12:19 [D] It's huge.

12:21 [Don] It allows you to balance the internal video with the outside.

12:27 For still cameras, you don't need that because you can put a flash

12:31 on and you can pump enough light inside

12:34 the cupola to balance with the sunlit outside.

12:40 [M] Actually, I think we can quickly demonstrate it.

12:43 Behind Don right now, we've got filters up over the windows,

12:47 but we don't have filters on all the windows right now.

12:49 And if I just turn the camera right here,

12:52 that window and this window do not have filters on them.

12:55 So you can see they get a lot brighter just by looking out those two windows.

13:01 [D] I see, but you're using it to light your faces, which is pretty cool.

13:06 [Don] One of the things that I try not to do,

13:10 and that's to overexpose the whites.

13:12 If you take the whites and blow out the top end of your detector,

13:20 then there's no detail at all.

13:24 You see that a lot in photography from orbit with the clouds being blown out.

13:30 It's really good to at least keep some detail

13:36 in the brightest part of the region in the clouds.

13:41 [D] So your sensor is light sensitive and you

13:43 have the darker colors and the lighter colors.

13:45 You're saying you never want your histogram to hit the top.

13:48 Is that what you're saying?

13:49 You never want to saturate.

13:50 Do I understand correctly?

13:52 [Destin's echo in their speaker] <i>I understand correctly?</i> [Don] Yeah,

13:54 and I would rather lose detail in the blacks

13:58 in the low-end than the blow detail out in the whites.

14:03 If you blow detail out in the whites, it's really noticeable.

14:06 Your eyes tend to get drawn to the brightest region of an image.

14:10 If there's no detail there and it's just snow, snow, white,

14:14 that is not as esthetically pleasing to me as having some detail in the whites.

14:22 Then the shadows are faded into oblivion, and we're used to seeing that.

14:28 That's I prefer to balance the exposure

14:34 across the range of lighting that's there.

14:38 [D] So here's what I want to understand.

14:40 I want to know, I saw a picture of you, Matt.

14:43 You were taking a picture of the top of the cupola.

14:45 It was a little video.

14:46 When you shot the Kilimanjaro shot,

14:48 you were looking out the big round porthole window up top.

14:52 What I didn't understand is where were your feet and what were you holding?

14:56 And were you just having to float there like your microphone?

14:59 Because you have two hands that are on the camera and you're not anchored.

15:03 So how are you doing that?

15:05 [Destin laughing] [M] That's a great question.

15:11 I can't show you that right now.

15:12 We got folks down in that other module.

15:14 But beneath us, there's little handrails and there's

15:16 little footholds that you can put your feet on.

15:41 Maybe this is a bit more a little bit more detail,

15:44 but I actually have One of our Jack's a crew mates had Ninja socks,

15:48 and I still have some of them on board.

15:49 I have little Ninja socks I could grip things with and that are helpful.

15:53 But we get to wear socks everywhere we go up here,

15:55 no shoes, and I'm able to grip things.

15:58 Or down beneath this or there's little crevices

15:59 in the walls that you put your feet into.

16:02 I was thinking about this just the other day.

16:05 As I was floating around, I was grabbing something with my hands,

16:08 and I've been up here long enough now

16:10 that my feet just drift off and they just grab things.

16:14 It's really interesting.

16:14 I don't think about it anymore.

16:16 My feet just grab things that they know where they are,

16:18 and I use that to stabilize my taking pictures.

16:21 [Don] Matthew is right.

16:23 We would be more advanced as human

16:26 beings if we had retained our prehensile feet.

16:30 [D] You need a monkey tail.

16:33 So you are using your feet below, and you're using the camera above.

16:39 And how do you know how close...

16:42 You're not touching the window, I noticed.

16:44 So you just have an overall understanding of the length of your body, right?

16:48 Can one of you grab a camera and the other one film how the other one does it?

16:52 Can we do that?

16:54 I'm not sure that you guys are capable of doing that, but if you think you are.

16:59 [M] Sure.

16:59 Sure.

16:59 I think we've got the camera stabilized here.

17:03 It'll say, Look, this is one of those moments, right?

17:06 You see them holding the camera, the microphone floats or Don readjusted for me.

17:10 But a lot of times the Earth is moving by so fast

17:13 that we have to pick a pretty fast shutter speed, or you can also,

17:18 if it's at night and you're trying to take a picture at night,

17:20 you actually hand track the Earth as it

17:22 goes by with the camera to reduce motion blur.

17:25 It would look something like this.

17:27 That's daytime right now,

17:27 but I'll show you what a night shot would look like in the cupola.

17:36 When you're doing that, you're actually stabilizing

17:38 on the Earth by looking through the viewfinder.

17:41 When you're looking through the viewfinder, you can see the Earth,

17:44 and you look to keep the center crosshairs of the camera on the same

17:47 spot of Earth to get rid of the motion blur from the Earth,

17:50 the Earth rotating and or the fact that we're going 17,

17:53 500 miles an hour to get rid of that.

17:55 A typical night shot with this new lens we have,

17:59 we're shooting one over 300 or one over 320th of a second.

18:03 But even that fast shutter speeds, you still see some motion blur on the Earth.

18:07 We take some of that out by very steadily tracking the camera on the Earth.

18:12 [D] So star trails on Earth, Don, when you shoot them,

18:17 you're going to start to get a little streak in about four seconds, right?

18:23 [Don] It depends on your lens.

18:25 With this 50-millimetre lens,

18:27 if you If you have an exposure greater than about a fourth of a second,

18:32 you could see notable streakiness in the stars.

18:39 If you want pinpoint stars, you got to have a shutter speed with a 50-millimetre

18:44 lens greater than a fourth of a second.

18:47 If you intentionally want star streaks,

18:50 I like to use a 30-second exposure on that and then just

18:55 do repetitive exposures and then assemble them as an overlay in Photoshop.

19:02 [D] Are we talking about on Earth or on station?

19:05 [M] Don is talking about on station.

19:06 A quarter second on this lens, you're going to see star streaks.

19:11 Then at a quarter second, because you have the Earth rotation involved,

19:14 in addition to the space station, you see the city streaks.

19:19 We really like to shoot cities at night in the 200s

19:21 or 300s of a second to get rid of the orbital motion.

19:24 But on Earth, depending on the lens, you can probably go, I can't remember,

19:27 I haven't done in a while, but 10,

19:30 15 seconds Earth without having to worry about star streaks.

19:32 It's a big difference.

19:33 In fact, when I share a lot of...

19:35 When I've shared a lot of pictures over the past couple of months,

19:37 I typically write down, Hey, these are the camera settings.

19:40 One of the most common questions I get is,

19:43 Why are you shooting such a fast shutter speed?

19:45 The realization of our orbital speed impacting

19:49 that, people come to realize it's a lot.

19:50 We shot a hurricane picture at one over 32,000ths of a second,

19:55 and it turned out to be a great picture.

19:57 [D] Your camera has been still too long.

19:59 Can you just somewhere else.

20:00 It's just the shots.

20:03 I just need to see some movement.

20:06 No, no, the video camera.

20:07 Can you show me something else?

20:09 I want to see the cupola.

20:10 [M] Got you.

20:12 I put it on a mount.

20:14 To give you a sense of what's going on in our world and how

20:17 tight a space we're in, Don and I are packed in the cupola right now,

20:20 and I'm moving my feet around while I'm talking

20:22 to you around somebody who's doing bench press beneath me.

20:24 Somebody is on a bench press, and they just put their feet out on the bench,

20:27 and I'm moving my feet around them as they

20:29 maneuver We're doing what we would call weight lifting,

20:31 but you were pulling against a vacuum.

20:32 That's how tight a quarters we're in right now.

20:35 [D] It's on ARED?

20:37 Are we allowed to know who it is or is it their private time?

20:42 [Don] Okay, here we go.

20:48 You can see now how Earth is...

20:53 The camera is adjusting to Earth, but then look at me, I'm in a shadow.

20:58 If I go It's down like this, now I'm

21:01 properly exposed because we have it on auto exposure.

21:05 Then I come up here and you can see Earth is all washed out.

21:09 But if you keep yourself within the confines

21:13 of the neutral density filters we've put up,

21:17 you can see that the camera is doing a pretty decent job at 4F

21:22 stop reduction of balancing the intensity of the light both inside and out.

21:28 [M] Let me do this.

21:30 Is he still there?

21:32 [D] Yeah, I'm still here.

21:34 Can you show me the...

21:35 Oh, that's a great shot.

21:37 That looks awesome.

21:38 Can you show me how the shutters work?

21:43 Did we lose you?

21:47 Yeah, can I see a closeup of the handle?

21:50 Like that handle?

21:51 Because one of the first conversations you and I had done was about that handle,

21:54 and there's a seal there.

21:59 [M] There you Yeah, Don is going to go

22:01 ahead and open the handle of the top shutter, window 7, we call it.

22:06 There's the crank.

22:07 One of the first things I noticed when I came up here was this is a mechanical

22:15 device opening a window or a shutter that just

22:18 opens up the world to the vacuum of space.

22:20 There's this through that little thing,

22:22 through the mechanical seals that are in there, straight to the space.

22:25 We're lucky enough just to get to sit in here and see that shot right there.

22:29 Don, you're looking good.

22:30 [D] You do look good, Don.

22:35 [Don] Yeah, that's because I put on a clean shirt for this interview,

22:39 Destin, just for you.

22:42 [D] Oh, thanks, Don.

22:43 I appreciate that.

22:44 What am I looking at there?

22:46 What spacecraft is that?

22:49 [M] Here.

22:50 Got you.

22:51 All right, we'll give you the quick tour around the bend here.

22:53 This is our Cignus spacecraft.

22:54 This brings up so much cool cargo for us

22:57 in science and payloads and food and Ice cream.

23:00 In fact, this ice cream and the shirt

23:01 that Don's wearing came up with this spacecraft.

23:03 We reached out and grabbed that spacecraft with this robotic arm.

23:07 It came, flew up, it hovered.

23:09 The spacecraft was hovering right out here.

23:11 That's actually the solar panel from Cygnus, and it was hovering right out here.

23:15 We reached out with the arm and we grabbed

23:16 it and then connected the space station right there.

23:19 Don's ride up to the space station, that's the Soyuz right there.

23:22 Soyuz docked our other crew, was out there on that other module

23:26 on the Ume that undocked a couple of weeks ago,

23:30 but Don's ride to space station is the Soyuz right there.

23:33 I'm going to try not to make you sick and flip you around and look

23:36 at Earth and then flip straightforward down to the front part of space station.

23:39 And way out there on the front of space

23:41 station as we're zipping around Earth is Dragon.

23:43 That's crew nine.

23:45 That's the crew that just arrived about a week ago.

23:47 And on the top side that you can't see is crew 8.

23:50 We can spin around and we can see

23:52 some experiments out there on the Japanese module.

23:54 And we can see radars and our solar panel is

23:58 doing good work charging our and running our whole space station.

24:01 I'm actually enjoying watching the camera adapt to each

24:03 one of these settings here as it goes through.

24:06 You can see how we point into the darkness inside the cupola and then Earth,

24:11 and it just has to adjust really quick just how bright the Earth is.

24:15 But this is one of the cool windows.

24:17 There's not always a lot of structure out this window, and then flip around,

24:21 and that gives you the full tour of the space

24:22 that we have here on the out the window

24:24 look from the Russian segment on the Aft part

24:27 of space station up to the front of the space station.

24:30 And then Don gets to sit right here and talk to you about it.

24:35 [Don] The cupola is less than 6 feet in diameter.

24:42 If I stretch my arms out, I can reach 6 feet,

24:47 and I can more than reach the whole cross-sectional diameter of the cupola.

24:53 It's a pretty tight space.

24:57 [D] Don, question for you.

24:59 How do you feel like a young astronaut, Padawan Matt,

25:02 has done with the teaching that you gave him?

25:08 What do you think about the shot he got, the high altitude event?

25:12 [M] A picture of which picture?

25:14 Did you say?

25:14 The Sprite?

25:16 [D] Yeah, the Sprite.

25:17 That's what it was.

25:18 Thank you.

25:19 What do you think about Matt's picture of the Sprite?

25:21 What do you think about Matt's picture of the Sprite?

25:23 [Don] Oh, man, that was amazing to catch a Sprite on edge.

25:29 You could see structure in the Sprite from space.

25:33 The structure is commensurate to what people could see from Earth.

25:37 What I want to do in terms of Sprite hunting

25:41 is to get a nadir view straight down on a Sprite.

25:45 So both Matthew and I have been shooting nadir with about a 200 millimeter

25:54 telephoto lens to try to catch a straight down nadir view of a Sprite.

26:00 We haven't caught one yet,

26:02 but we've probably taken 50,000 pictures of the tops of dark clouds.

26:09 But one of these times we're going to catch a nadir view of a Sprite.

26:12 [M] It's going to be awesome.

26:14 [D] To be clear, a nadir view is orthogonal

26:17 to the surface of the Earth out of window seven there.

26:21 Is that correct?

26:25 [M] It would be right down that way.

26:28 We've been shooting straight down out that window,

26:30 and then I've been shooting out towards the front.

26:32 We look at the map and we look at the weather for where we're going to be,

26:36 and we're able to identify where there's going to be thunderstorms.

26:39 We target thunderstorms that are right after sunset

26:42 so that they have the most energy in them.

26:45 You want to have all that energy from the sun

26:46 during the day built up in the Earth,

26:48 and that creates the most energetic thunderstorms, and we target those.

26:52 Then we're just trying to shoot a lot to try and capture this event.

26:56 You can either shoot by maybe setting up an intervalometer,

26:59 but of the camera only half a second.

27:02 We've been using the remote shutter.

27:03 The remote shutter has a lock feature,

27:06 and so you can fire off a shot that's every...

27:09 If you're shooting maybe a 50th or a 60th of a second exposure,

27:12 we can lock it down so we have five milliseconds in between.

27:15 So you're just shooting.

27:17 You'll crack out maybe 2,000 or 3,000 images in a short period of time.

27:23 [D] Matt, you're about to leave, man.

27:25 We've got just a little bit of time here before com loss,

27:28 but my question for you is, this is the cupola.

27:33 This has been your spot for six months now, your first time flown astronaut.

27:38 What do you feel sitting in that room

27:42 right there with that guy right beside you?

27:44 What are you feeling right now, knowing you're about to go home?

27:48 [M] So many feelings.

27:51 I'm grateful.

27:53 Don and I spent a lot of time before flight talking about things,

27:56 and Don gave me lots of great advice from just how to fly in space,

27:59 what the problems you're going to have or just

28:02 about photography and what you need to do.

28:04 And one of the things Don had me do before flight,

28:06 and I took it on, was I would check out these cameras.

28:08 NASAs is really nice.

28:09 They let us check out the cameras, and I practiced a lot.

28:13 So that paid off.

28:14 So practice paid off up here.

28:16 But things that I'm feeling are obviously grateful that Don showed

28:18 me those ways of what to do and how to get there.

28:21 And then I feel an immense sense of responsibility as well.

28:26 I remember coming in, floating into the cupola for the first

28:29 time six plus months ago and just looking outside and thinking

28:33 that I had some responsibility to take as many pictures as possible

28:37 to capture what my eyes have seen to share with the world.

28:40 This is an insane view.

28:42 I don't think I've got there yet.

28:43 I think I got a lot of ways to go, but it's really hard.

28:46 [Don] And what a mission to have to try

28:49 to take as many pictures as you possibly can.

28:54 [M] We've clogged up the downlink a little bit.

28:56 The KU bandwidth we have, the satellite bandwidth,

28:59 has limited by how many pictures we've taken up here trying to capture that.

29:05 [D] When you get back, I'd like to just have a couple of your minutes

29:09 to find out what your favorite picture was or one of them.

29:12 But before we leave,

29:13 I just want to say there's another Don that we should recognize,

29:16 and that's your dad.

29:18 Your dad has a long history of this stuff, right, Matt?

29:22 Your dad's name is Donald, too, right?

29:25 He sent me an email about the new lenses and stuff you got.

29:29 Yeah.

29:30 Yeah.

29:32 [M] No, my dad was a photographer.

29:34 He was a photographer in the US Air Force

29:36 and then continued that career doing local production and direction.

29:41 And so, Don Pettit has pointed out that I know

29:47 a little bit about composition and setting up a photo.

29:50 And I think a lot of that came from watching my dad

29:52 set up photos and looking at some of the photos my dad did,

29:54 some of that intuition about how to quickly pick up a camera,

29:57 point and shoot to capture a moment.

30:00 Sometimes up here, you just don't have a lot of time.

30:03 I remember one time I was up here with Mike Barrett was shooting,

30:06 and the moon looked just right.

30:07 I ended up pulling out this 50 to 500, quickly throwing in a card,

30:12 resetting the camera,

30:13 and shooting the moon over Mike Barrett's shoulder in just a couple of seconds.

30:19 I think that intuition for composition comes from a young

30:22 age of doing it and watching my dad doing it.

30:24 So thank you to my father for that one.

30:26 [D] Dons are important.

30:28 I just want to say I think we're about to lose comms, guys.

30:32 Thank you so much for your time.

30:33 I just wanted, if I'm honest,

30:36 I wanted to capture video of you two in space together because I love it.

30:43 And anybody that's ever interacted with you, knows how special this is.

30:46 So thank you for your time.

30:47 I really appreciate it.

30:48 And Don, I'm looking forward to seeing all the things you do on orbit.

30:54 [Don] Yeah, like I said, the best is yet to be.

30:59 [D] I really want to know what that means, but I'm looking forward to it.

31:03 [M] Thank you so much for the interview.

31:05 I much appreciate it.

31:06 [D] Thank you, gentlemen.

31:07 I appreciate you.

31:07 You're great, guys.

31:09 Thank you, Mission Control.

31:10 I'm grateful for your time.

31:11 [Mission Control] Destin, that was fabulous.

31:12 That was so much fun!

31:13 All right.

31:14 That was an awesome interview.

31:16 It was a full circle moment for me having met Don in a mockup

31:20 of the cupola and then getting to talk to him in the cupola.

31:23 That was really, really cool.

31:25 These guys are on social media.

31:27 If you want to follow them and get their photos,

31:29 I'll leave their handles down in the video description, just follow them, man.

31:32 It's a really cool timeline cleanse for whatever's on your algorithm.

31:36 You get to see really cool pictures from space, and they're interesting people.

31:40 So go check that out.

31:41 Also, you can follow NASA @NASAastronauts.

31:44 That's really cool.

31:45 I have a thing that I do that I think you might find interesting.

31:49 It's called @WhoIsInSpace a guy named Jeff and I,

31:52 we post all kinds of stuff from people that are in space at any moment in time.

31:57 So I'll leave that handle down below as well.

32:00 You can also check it out at whoisinspace.com.

32:03 When Don went to the space station,

32:05 that was a new record for how many people were in orbit around the Earth.

32:10 19.

32:10 That was a big deal.

32:11 So you could just go to whoisinspace.com and you

32:14 could see everybody that's in space at any given moment,

32:16 whether they're Russian or Chinese or European Space Agency,

32:20 Canada, US, whatever.

32:21 It's all up there at whoisinspace.com.

32:24 I think you'll really enjoy that.

32:26 One more thing.

32:27 There's a Smarter Every Day thing I'd like to tell you about.

32:29 It's a Patreon.

32:31 I have a Patreon account.

32:34 And basically what that is, it's like a goodwill engine.

32:37 If you enjoy Smarter Every Day and you appreciate what I

32:40 do and you see what I'm going for here and you're like,

32:42 Man, I want Destin to be able to keep doing

32:43 this and not have to worry about sponsors or anything like that.

32:47 For people that like that and they want to pitch

32:49 in, they go to Patreon.com/smartereveryday and they just kick in.

32:54 I'm grateful to everybody that does that.

32:56 But one of the cool things we do every

32:58 year is there is a Smarter Every Day sticker team,

33:01 where I thank people for sticking with me on Patreon.

33:05 So the way that works is every year, I physically mail a sticker to your house

33:10 if you are a supporter at Patreon.com/smartereveryday.

33:13 So that was the Supersonic Baseball team.

33:15 One year we had the James Webb Space Telescope space team,

33:20 and last year we had the Exploration team.

33:23 This year we're working on the sticker for the sticker team.

33:26 And if you are a patron, you can suggest what the sticker team is this year.

33:31 So there's a post on Patreon.

33:33 Go check it out, and I will physically mail a sticker to your house.

33:38 And the cool thing about it is it's like a little club,

33:41 and you get it the year that you support.

33:43 So if you've never done it before,

33:44 this is a great year to jump in on the sticker team.

33:47 It's going to be really fun.

33:48 So thank you to everybody that supports on Patreon.

33:50 I'm grateful.

33:52 And yeah, I'm honored that you would spend time watching my videos.

33:57 I put a lot of time into them, and I enjoy it.

33:59 So I think that's everything.

34:00 So feel free to subscribe to Smarter Every Day if you want to.

34:03 If not, no big deal.

34:04 I'm just grateful that you're here.

34:06 That's it.

34:06 I'm Destin.

34:07 You're getting Smarter Every Day.

34:08 Have a good one, bye.