Ariane 5 rocket on the pad at the Guiana Space Centre carrying $700 million worth of satellites

In a series of stunning images, photographer Simon Norfolk documents the life of a satellite, from manufacture and testing all the way to the launchpad

I’ve loved Simon Norfolk’s for a long time so I was specially pleased to see that he had entered our Photography Annual this year with Satellite, a series of images commissioned by This is Real Art which document the life of an Astra satellite.

Two of these images made it into the Photography Annual helping it, I think, to become the strongest we have done. It’s wonderful to be able to show all these beautiful images in print, but there is a downside. Compared to online, there is a chilling permanence to print: get something wrong and that’s it. So it was with a sinking stomach that I noticed that we had managed to print Simon’s images at a lower resolution than they should have been. Everyone at CR apologises to him for this but there is an upside. We are going to run an extended selection of images from the Satellite series as our Monograph for the November issue.

This post is to give you a taster of what to expect. If you’d like to receive Monograph, please go here.

Part of the satellite production room; calibration and testing rigs, EADS Astrium, Toulouse

Emergency back-up power generation, SES Astra satellite guidance centre, Betzdorf, Luxembourg

Supercomputer cooling systems, SES Astra satellite guidance centre, Betzdorf, Luxembourg

Astra 3B undergoing testing in the anechoic chamber at EADS Astrium, Toulouse

The DINO Room in Betzdorf which controls all the satellite TV content being reflected by SES Astra’s satellites

The S5 Payload Preparation Facility where satellites are checked over before launch

Uplink antennae, Betzdorf, Luxembourg

The hydrazine fuel that powers the satellites is so poisonous it has to be loaded by workers wearing full space suits

Soyouz launch pad, Guiana Space Centre, Kourou, French Guiana

Project commissioned by This is Real Art. Creative director: Paul Belford.

Simon Norfolk is represented by Peter Bailey

More on the CR Photography Annual here