2020 Aviation Week Photo Contest Editor's Picks: Defense & Space

The Swiss Air Force’s PC-7 Team comprises Boeing F/A-18 Hornet pilots drawn from Switzerland’s three fighter squadrons. This three-ship section was performing a training flight in the eastern Swiss Alps over Glarus after their scheduled 2020 season was curtailed due to widespread European air show cancellations. The pilots’ call signs are Daffy, Menkster and Nemo.

I’d been photographing several aircraft one afternoon at Anapolis Air Base’s yard when I realized that the Embraer Super Tucano’s propeller disk and the mechanic formed a beautiful composition for a picture. I learned there was a flight that night, so I came back when it was dark. The image was already in my mind. So I prepared the camera, checked if I was in the right position and, when the airplane arrived, I clicked.

Col. Randy “R2” Roberts flies his 90th Fighter Sqdn. Boeing F-15E Strike Eagle through the Chugach Mountains, near Anchorage, Alaska. I was tootling along in the back seat of another F-15E with Maj. Evan “File” Pettus at the controls. This shot took place just before Roberts retired. He was commanding officer for the 3rd Operations Group out of Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. The Strike Eagles were also about to depart Alaskan skies, with the 90th about to reform with a new cadre of pilots flying F-22A Raptors.

This Boeing AH-64D was shot during the graduation ceremony of Israeli Air Force pilot cadets in December 2012. The helicopter is firing flares and descending to simulate an evasive maneuver for the public.

An Israeli Air Force Boeing Apache helicopter demonstrates its self-protection abilities.

This Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache “Peten” rests in total darkness at midnight on a desert air base, but suddenly it is circled with a swirling blizzard of lights that creates a blinding ring to shield it.

The Lockheed Martin F-22 demonstration team flies at the 2018 Wings Over North Georgia Air Show.

This critter was standing on the tarmac at sunrise in front of an AH-64 Peten helicopter in the Negev Desert.

Comet NeoWise passes over a Falcon 9 before launch. Old-fashioned filtering, including the use of a black towel, was used to balance the exposure between the brightly lit launchpad and the sky above.

Reflecting across the water at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, Antares and the launch facility glowed before the launch, creating a “rainbow” of colors in 2017. The source of the blue lights at the top is unclear.

The space shuttles Enterprise and Discovery stood nose to nose before switching places at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, in 2012.

The Orion test article capsule at NASA Langley Research Center’s Hydro Impact Basin, part of the Landing and Impact Research (LandIR) Facility in Hampton, Virginia, awaits a water impact test scheduled for later that day. A national historical landmark, the LandIR vehicle structural testing complex—better known as the “gantry”—was built in 1963 to train astronauts to land on the Moon. The tests at Langley are preparing the way for proposed future astronaut missions to the Moon and Mars.

The International Space Station is captured transiting the nearly full Moon on Sept. 30, 2020, as seen from the Mall in Washington.

A blood-red sky provides a remarkable backdrop at Launch Pad 39A. This untouched shot was taken more than 40 min. after sunset on a mostly-overcast night and produced a scene I have not previously shot in my years of rocket photography.

NASA’s Orion AA-2 spacecraft begins a launch abort test at dawn.

Falcon 9 on Launch Pad 39A ahead of the first crewed launch to the International Space Station with Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.

The first night launch streak photo of the Israeli “Shavit” launcher, taking the “Ofeq-16” satellite to orbit. The rocket blasts through the clouds, and above the Moon, heading into orbit. This is the only system that launches west due to Israel’s location by the Mediterranean Sea.