When groundbreaking astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983, she received plenty of congratulations. But one of the most meaningful nods to her accomplishment was not from a NASA official or a head of state; it was from an attorney named Linda ...read more
In 1877, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli turned his telescope to Mars and saw signs of a potentially lush world. He would publish his observations of what he believed to be “seas” and “continents” on the Martian surface. He also described channels (later found to be an ...read more
After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, the United States entered a fierce competition with their Communist rivals for dominance in space. The ensuing space race was filled with many notable successes – including American astronauts walking and playing golf on the Moon – ...read more
Humans have been captivated by Mars almost as long as we’ve been watching the night sky. The ancient Greeks and Romans watched nightly as a reddish dot moved among the stars, growing dimmer and brighter in a two-year cycle. Each named it for the god of war; the Roman version, ...read more
History Flashback takes a look at historical “found footage” of all kinds—newsreels, instructional films, even cartoons—to give us a glimpse into how much things have changed, and how much has remained the same. On October 4, 1957, the USSR launched the first satellite into ...read more
On the morning of January 28, 1986, a nation of viewers gave a collective gasp. Space Shuttle Challenger, the crown jewel of NASA’s ambitious shuttle program, had just exploded, leaving a telltale trail behind as it disintegrated into thin air. The disaster prompted an outpouring ...read more
By January of 1986 America was already bored with spaceflight. It was, in part, NASA’s own fault. The government agency had debuted the space shuttle program five years earlier with an aggressive public-relations message that the reusable vehicles would make access to space both ...read more
In the early 1960s, 13 trailblazing American women participated in a secret program to become America’s first female astronaut. Although the skilled pilots passed the same physiological screening tests given to the Mercury Seven astronauts, NASA abruptly shuttered the ...read more
In the early 1960s, 13 trailblazing American women participated in a secret program to become America’s first female astronaut. Although the skilled pilots passed the same physiological screening tests given to the Mercury Seven astronauts, NASA abruptly shuttered the ...read more
For those looking to reach the stars, there’s only one possible career that leads there: astronaut. On June 7, 2017, NASA revealed a new class of astronaut candidates, picked from a record-breaking 18,353 applications. In the 56 years of human spaceflight, only 338 other men and ...read more
About two years ago, the Chicago-area attorney Nancy Lee Carlson was perusing an online auction site when she saw a listing for a bag containing “lunar dust” as part of an auction on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service. No one had bid on the item in three previous auctions, and ...read more
Though astronomers have long known that other stars in the Milky Way galaxy have planets orbiting them, they weren’t actually able to see such exoplanets until just a couple of decades ago. Now they have confirmed the existence of more than 3,400, according to the latest ...read more
By the winter of 1967, President John F. Kennedy’s goal of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth” by the end of the decade appeared to be in doubt. A three-month delay in the delivery of a newly designed spacecraft had pushed back the Apollo program’s first ...read more
Barbara “Barby” Canright joined California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1939. As the first female “human computer,” her job was to calculate anything from how many rockets were needed to make a plane airborne to what kind of rocket propellants were needed to propel a ...read more
1. John Glenn was a star before joining the Mercury program. Glenn had fallen in love with flying at an early age, building model airplanes while growing up in Ohio. In 1941, Glenn discovered a U.S. Department of Commerce program looking for students to train as pilots. Just six ...read more
As evidenced by the launchpad fire that killed three members of the Apollo 1 mission and the near disaster of Apollo 13, the elite astronauts selected for NASA’s Apollo program risked their lives in the quest to land the first man on the moon. Now, a new study asserts that even ...read more
1. Apollo employed nearly half a million people. Apollo’s moon mission was one of the most expansive government initiatives in American history. During its peak years, some 34,000 NASA employees and 375,000 outside contractors took part in the program. Budget estimates vary, but ...read more
1. He saw numerous sunrises and sunsets each day. Cruising along at over 17,000 miles per hour, the International Space Station circumnavigates Earth once every 90 minutes. Kelly and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Kornienko therefore had the opportunity to witness an astounding ...read more
On December 21, 1968, Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, blasted off from present-day Cape Canaveral in Florida. The plan called for the three astronauts onboard to come within about 70 miles of the moon, circle it several times and return safely home, all while ...read more
On July 20, the 46th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s historic first steps on the moon, the Smithsonian made some history of its own by embarking on its first-ever Kickstarter campaign in a quest to raise $500,000 to preserve the spacesuit Armstrong wore during his ...read more
When the space shuttle Challenger lifted off on its 10th mission on January 28, 1986, its crew of seven included New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, winner of a national competition designed to highlight the importance of teachers and foster students’ interest in space ...read more
As its spacecraft New Horizons prepared to make its history-making flyby with Pluto on the morning of Tuesday, July 14, NASA released a high-resolution image of the dwarf planet, captured by New Horizons before it went out of contact with Earth the previous night. Taken when the ...read more
What did astronauts eat on their celestial voyages? From dehydrated spaghetti to bacon cubes, the answers might surprise you. Space food had to fit a number of requirements. Easily portable was a given, as just bringing food into space is incredibly expensive: even today, it ...read more
Every epic moment in modern history inevitably spawns a tangled web of conspiracy theories, and the Apollo moon landings are no exception. From the moment astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the lunar surface on July 21, 1969, some believed it was all an ...read more
