Space mission: photographer Benedict Redgrove shoots for the stars with NASA

We’d always suspected photographer Benedict Redgrove had a bit of a space fetish. One of Wallpaper’s favourite lensmen, he rarely passes up a chance to bring an otherworldly quality to everything from cars, architecture and interiors. Unsurprisingly, Redgrove has a long-running personal project that explores this interest in much more detail and with exactly the right subject matter. For the past seven years, the photographer has been working closely with NASA on documenting the space agency’s ongoing work on the Orion spacecraft project. Orion is the next generation of manned space vehicles, the groundwork for exploration missions that will, ultimately, lead to a Mars mission.

Together with the Space Launch System, a heavy lifting modular rocket system that will be the backbone of supplying and assembling these kinds of long-distance programme. This is heady stuff, the multi-billion dollar bleeding edge of aeronautics. Fittingly, Redgrove is undertaking the project with the Swiss-made ALPA camera, an ultra high-definition digital camera, maxing out the detail of objects that are as meticulously crafted as a piece of fine jewellery. Recently exhibited at the Goodwood Festival of Speed (29 June – 2 July), the gallery will ultimately form a book, due to launch at around the same time as the first SLS boosters power through the stratosphere on the way to frontiers unknown.