NASA Photographer Captures Aerial Views of Washington from Fighter Jet

High above Washington, D.C., a NASA photographer strapped into a military fighter jet turned the instruments of aerospace power toward a quieter purpose: documenting the capital city as it exists from the sky. The mission, a collaboration between civilian science and military capability, reflects a long tradition of seeing the earth from above in order to understand it more fully. What emerges is not merely imagery, but a record of how a city holds itself together — its density, its arteries, its open spaces — at a particular moment in time.