NASA may not be an agency known for its commitment to aesthetic filmmaking, but they’ve managed to produce one of the most beautiful clips of footage I’ve watched in years.
The film below is a space shuttle launch from the perspective of a solid rocket booster, one of the giant white rockets attached to the belly of the shuttle during its ascent. Thanks to a tiny camera and contact microphone attached its frame, you can ride along with it as it sends the shuttle into orbit, then free falls back to earth. There’s not much going on visually until the boosters separate at about the two-minute mark–but after that, it’s a film even Stanley Kubrick would be proud of.
This clip was shot during STS-124, a mission flown by the shuttle Discovery to deliver a new Japanese module to the International Space Station.
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