Welcome to the Why AxS, ArtCenter’s podcast featuring brilliant scientific and artistic minds ponder the big why's that come with being a tiny part of this universe. 

Our first episode, How to Land on a Comet, takes you aboard JPL’s Rosetta Mission, as we’re joined by mission planner Art Chmielewski + alum/illustrator Liz de la Torre (BFA 13), who mapped the surface of speeding comet for a first-of-a-kind rendezvous with a spacecraft — from a single pixel.

Rosetta remains one of the world’s most ambitious — and arduous — space exploration missions. Landing on a comet as it zips and twists through space poses seemingly limitless degrees of difficulty and danger.

Seeking an artistic solution to a scientific problem — how to map the comet’s surface — Chmielewski recruited de la Torre while she was a student at ArtCenter. 

Now working as a Creative Strategist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, de la Torre acts as an artistic interpreter of scientific theories, using the illustration skills she honed at the College.

For the Rosetta Mission, de la Torre listened to some of the world's leading experts on comets, and based on their  ideas and projections, created multiple approximations of the comet’s terrain. 

These beautifully detailed visuals, capturing the comet’s potential tiny pores and bubbling gas, allowed scientists to better visualize the best approach — and helped secure the mission’s success.

They are truly brilliant works of art and science.

 

Join ArtCenter’s Lauren Mahoney and Ethan Stockwell for an episode full of behind-the-scenes insights into everything from the search for life in the universe to the hidden impact of space research on our everyday lives as we embark on an extraordinary and otherworldly ride.