NASA Investigates Space Vikings

摘要

For Ved Chirayath, an aeronautics and astronautics graduate student at Stanford University in California, an online photo project that involved NASA researchers dressed as Vikings was just a creative way to promote space science. Chirayath, an amateur photographer who also works at NASA's Ames Research Center (ARC) on compact research satellites known as "CubeSats," never suspected that his fanciful image would put him in the crosshairs of a government waste investigation.CubeSats, he says, reminded him of Viking explorers who "travelled farther and saw more in much smaller ships than had been used before their time." That connection inspired his Space Vikings photos, snapped with the participation of a few costumed NASA researchers as well as a living history group called the Vikings of Bjornstad.