LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
At NPR, our science reporters try to translate big ideas into less nerdy concepts for our audiences. At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories, a team of visual strategists is doing something similar. They're creating art projects that help the public understand their various space missions. Drew Tewksbury has the story.
DREW TEWKSBURY, BYLINE: At the lush Huntington Botanical Gardens near Pasadena, there's a mysterious metallic structure nestled among the palm trees. It's 17 feet tall and curled like a nautilus shell. Walk inside, and you'll hear this.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE ORBIT PAVILION SOUNDS)
TEWKSBURY: It's called the Orbit Pavilion. And it was created by a team of artists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Each sound is triggered by a tracking signal of 19 orbiting satellites above earth.
DAN GOODS: And so all day long, they move all around you, it's much like listening to a bird, you know, sort of fly across the sky. And in this particular case, it's satellites that are helping us understand the Earth.
TEWKSBURY: That's Dan Goods, who leads the visual strategy team at JPL's nearby headquarters. They call it the Studio at JPL.
GOODS: It's artists, designers, makers, thinkers helping come up with the ways of telling the public about what NASA does, as well as helping scientists and engineers think about the future.
TEWKSBURY: His team has made travel posters for planets in distant galaxies. They've simulated Jupiter's churning atmosphere in a small room. And they once drilled a hole in a grain of sand, then displayed it with six rooms filled with sand to give a sense of how tiny we are in the vast universe. We met in a wood-walled JPL conference room lined with the paintings of stern-faced former directors, including the one who hired him.
GOODS: The director of JPL gave me a six-month opportunity, and that was 14 years ago. What I find is that a lot of really creative people here - we think in similar ways. You know, we're always trying to experiment. We're trying to ask big questions and see where our experiments take us. It's been an amazing place. It's like a playground for nerds here.
TEWKSBURY: Projects like the Orbit Pavilion are meant to engage the public, but many of the teams' art experiments are on the highly secure JPL campus. These pieces are made to reinvigorate scientists who may not get feedback from their projects for months or even years. Here's an example. During its mission to Jupiter, NASA's Juno space probe made a brief pass near Earth in 2013. So Goods hatched a plan. Ham radio operators from around the world would team up and contact the spacecraft.
GOODS: We ended up getting thousands of people all around the world to all signal at exactly the same time. And we had them say hi. (Imitating Morse code). You know, Morse code.
(SOUNDBITE OF MORSE CODE BEEPING)
GOODS: We got the data back, and we could actually hear them. But when you hear the sound, it's beautiful because it really is these thousands of people from around the world all working together to do something. And it says hi.
TEWKSBURY: Goods takes me to the studio. It's a nondescript trailer where his team works.
DAVID DELGADO: It doesn't have the same water feature.
TEWKSBURY: The place is packed with stuff - remnants from projects, architectural models, plans and images pinned up on every conceivable patch of wall. Goods' longtime collaborator, David Delgado, is working on a project on a NASA satellite that tracks changes in water on Earth.
DELGADO: We have water that's melting from the glaciers up in Greenland and going into the ocean. So just to get a sense of where we are - I mean, how much water are we using? What's going to happen in the future? Rising sea levels - we're building a digital water feature that will show the flow and movement of water around the earth.
TEWKSBURY: They haven't decided what final form that the project will take. But the goal of these artists is not so different than the mission of JPL scientists. They aim to inspire a sense of wonder and encourage the public to think about the universe and our place in it. For NPR News, I'm Drew Tewksbury.
(SOUNDBITE OF MELODIUM'S "AURORA BOREALIS")