Imaging the Planets in 3D: The Introduction of Computer Art at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

In 1977, a pair of unmanned spacecraft built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), launched on a mission to explore the outer solar system. As the spacecraft arced toward Jupiter, JPL’s team of imaging scientists prepared to receive and shape data collected by Voyager's scientific instruments into high-resolution photographic images. A second team of young computer scientists and artists began a parallel project—creating computer-generated films simulating the spacecraft’s journeys. The Computer Graphics Laboratory (CGL), headed by manager Robert Holzman, included a newly-graduated computer-graphics researcher, 2 novice systems programmers, and an artist-in-residence. This paper explores the introduction of 3D computer graphics and computer art to NASA at a transitional moment in astronomy—the born-digital era, characterized by a decisive shift from earlier, photographic techniques to real-time, digital collection of data (McCray, 2014). The CGL mixed image data with 3D simulation in a cinematic hybrid that was fascinating to journalists, the public and to writers and filmmakers from nearby Hollywood. 3D computer graphics intervened in scientific observation by shifting the point of view, moving the narrative backward and forward in time, or simulating future events. While computer-assisted image processing was a well-developed concept at NASA/JPL by 1977, computer graphics and computer art were both in their infancy. Visitors to the CGL saw new views of the heavens unfold through animation and art, mediated by the computer, as boundaries blurred between image processing and artistic interpretation, as well as between machinic and human vision.