She Helps Public Share the Ride : Volunteer’s Energy Results in Videotape of Uranus Images

Kate Sasanoff lowered her voice.

“This is kind of embarrassing,” she confided, glancing around the art gallery, wondering who else might be listening, “but I did it because I believe art should make humanity feel good about itself. I mean, here’s something humanity is doing not just to make money.”

Kate Sasanoff, 35, earns $4.50 an hour plus 5% commission as an art saleswoman at the Circle Gallery in West Los Angeles, but she is also, in a sense, the volunteer art broker for the Voyager 2 space probe. Because of Sasanoff, thousands of people at five locations throughout the United States are seeing raw images of the planet Uranus, its rings and its moons just a split-second after scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory get their first peek.

To Sasanoff, the mysterious videotape images--still black and white, awaiting color enhancement from JPL’s computers--are works of art. But, she admitted with a sigh, “I’m having a hard time getting it accepted by the art community.”

Still, after 4 1/2 years of work on this project, these are days of triumph for Sasanoff. The show she helped produce--using a high-tech network in which video images are transmitted from JPL over phone lines to the Museum of Science and Industry in Exposition Park and four other sites--started last Wednesday and will continue through next Wednesday.

Today is considered the last prime viewing day, offering the shots from Voyager’s closest pass.

Sasanoff’s fascination with what she calls “space science art” took hold in 1981, when as an art student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology she visited JPL to do a documentary on Voyager’s close encounter with Saturn.

“While I was there I saw the live images of the planet on display monitors. And people were just amazed by it. People were plastered to the screen by these images. I’ve been figuring a way to get these images to the public. . . . I mean, it’s their tax dollars, right?”

Consulting throughout with Frank Bristow, public affairs director at JPL, Sasanoff contacted Colorado Video Inc. of Boulder, Colo., a pioneering high-tech firm. Colorado Video donated the equipment that converts video data into audio data that can be transmitted over phone lines, and then reconverts it to video at the receiving end. The process is known as “slow-scan video.”

“We agreed to do it if it was a hands-off operation,” Bristow said. “I warned them that the black and white picture may be a bit dull.”

In addition to the Museum of Science and Industry, the Uranus video also is being shown to the public at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, M.I.T., the University of Hawaii and Colorado Video headquarters in Boulder. “All the reports we’ve had is that traffic has been very brisk,” said David McIntosh, a “teleconferencing” specialist with Colorado Video.

In addition to news media reports, other video presentations on the Voyager mission are available to the public. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is producing an official live report from JPL, featuring press briefings from scientists with the aid of graphs and video images, that is available on many cable stations across the country, and to any owner of a satellite dish.

Also, a series of one-hour news reports for public television is being produced by Televane Productions of Burbank in conjunction with NASA, according to a spokesman for Televane. The small Los Angeles public station KLCS, Channel 58, has scheduled the program at 9 p.m. Monday and 10 p.m. Tuesday. (KCET elected not to pick up the program.)

At the Museum of Science and Industry on Saturday morning, a group of about 20 people sat on the floor watching two video presentations. One was the official NASA broadcast from JPL, and the other was the raw images arranged by Sasanoff.

The image of the moment was the north pole of Uranus. Kwan Young, a self-described “space nut” who had set up his home video camera to record the program, said the image reminded him of a desert marked with wind-blown furrows--”but obviously it’s not, because it’s made of gas.”

Another image came onto the screen, looking like “half-Earth and half-Uranus,” according to Tae Park, age 7. “I might be the first man to go to Mars,” said Tae, a student at Wonderland Elementary School in Laurel Canyon, a magnet school for gifted children. “Maybe when I’m the age of 32. Yeah, I’ll get my space suit by then.”

Would he go to Uranus? “No. I wouldn’t take the risk. . . . I would go to Mars to get more candy bars.”

Back at the Circle Gallery, Sasanoff said she would take the risk. She suspects that a true human close encounter “has got to be different” from the color images still to come through JPL’s computers.

“I wish I was there,” she said. “I would really like to see that stuff.”