NASA

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<i>Discovery</i> enters the Vehicle Assembly Building.

Space Shuttle: The Time-Lapse Movie

A team of photographers captures Discovery's long journey to the launch pad.
May 17, 2010 | By The Editors

NASA

Exit Strategy

NASA’s new launch abort system just passed a major test. But what booster and capsule will use it?
May 06, 2010 | By Michael Klesius

Power of the Pen

Still picking yourself up off the floor after reading our recent post about the $152,000 that was paid at auction for Neil Armstrong's autograph, along with his famous "one small step" quote, written on a sheet of the Apollo 11 flight plan?Here's what Armstrong had to say in his 2005 biography by J...
April 26, 2010 | By Mike Klesius

240,000-mile Filing Extension

"Dear Mr. Taxman: I'm sorry I missed the deadline. I was, uh, hmm, in a spaceship flying to the moon?"On the evening of April 15, 2010, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's John H. Glenn lecture series honored four legendary men of Apollo 13 on the 40th anniversary of their hair-raising ...
April 16, 2010 | By Mike Klesius

Momentous Memorabilia

“Well I can’t say that this thing hasn’t been filled with excitement,” said astronaut Jim Lovell as Apollo 13's crew crowded into the Command Module Odyssey—following the explosion of an onboard tank in the Service Module—and headed back to Earth. CapCom immediately joked, "Well, James, if you can'...
April 15, 2010 | By Rebecca Maksel

America In Space

“The first decade in the Space Age was a unique moment in human history,” says Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum curator Roger Launius. “For the first time, humanity ventured off its home planet, to explore the moon and elsewhere. And along the way, we experienced both excitement and someti...
April 02, 2010 | By Rebecca Maksel

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, right, meets filmmaker James Cameron at the space agency

Cameron’s Camera

Avatar’s creator hopes to direct the first movies shot on Mars.
March 23, 2010 | By Tony Reichhardt

Kraft in Mission Control in July 1965.

A&S Interview: Chris Kraft

NASA's first Flight Director assesses the state of the space program 40 years after Apollo.
March 2010 | By Michael Klesius

<b><i>Four years after NASA’s inception</b></i>, agency administrator James Webb saw Bruce Stevenson’s formal portrait of astronaut Alan Shepard, and came up with an unusual idea: to hire artists to be part of NASA’s staff, to illustrate and illuminate the agency’s missions. “Important events can be interpreted by artists to give a unique insight into significant aspects of our history-making advances into space,” Webb wrote in a 1963 press release. “An artistic record of this nation’s program of space exploration will have great value for future generations and may make a significant contribution to the history of American art.”

<br><br>Since 1963, hundreds of artists (and musicians, poets—even one fashion designer) have interpreted NASA’s aeronautic and space projects. In celebration of NASA’s 50th anniversary in 2008, more than 70 diverse artworks from the program are touring the country as part of an exhibition titled <i>NASA / ART: 50 Years of Exploration</i>. Click on the images at right to take a closer look at some of the items in the traveling exhibit. Images and text are taken from the exhibition catalog of the same name, written by James Dean and Bertram Ulrich. 

<br><br>“In May 1963, NASA, with the help of the National Gallery of Art, selected eight artists to document the last Mercury flight, which would transport astronaut Gordon Cooper into the heavens,” write James Dean and Bertram Ulrich in the exhibition catalog. “Seven sketched and painted the subtropical fields around an imposing launchpad while the eighth enduring the pitching and rolling deck of a recovery ship in the Pacific Ocean. The paintings and drawings produced by these eight artists formed the cornerstone of an art collection that spans almost fifty years of American history and currently comprises nearly three thousand works.”

<br><br><i>In Power</i>, by Paul Calle (oil on panel, 50 x 58 inches, 1963), “The Atlas launch vehicle, producing 360,000 pounds of thrust, lifts the last Mercury astronaut, Gordon Cooper, into Earth orbit for a thirty-four-hour flight on May 15, 1963—at the time, an American long-duration record.”

NASA Art on Tour

A traveling exhibit from the space agency's right brain.
March 09, 2010 | By Rebecca Maksel

Apollo Legends, On the Road Again

When Bob Hope took Neil Armstrong to Southeast Asia with the USO Tour a few months after the Apollo 11 moon landing, the troops at each show gave the astronaut and former Navy fighter pilot standing ovations whenever he walked on stage.Armstrong will travel abroad again to bolster troop moral, this...
March 03, 2010 | By Mike Klesius

Enterprise Shuttle parked at  the new home, the National Air and Space Museum Steven F Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia in 2003.

Shuttles For Sale

Three orbiters in search of good homes. Not cheap.
March 2010 | By Guy Gugliotta

Race and the Space Race

PRX Radio ran an interesting piece over the weekend, narrated by former astronaut Mae Jemison, about race and the early space program. NASA and the civil rights movement came of age in the same decade, and by chance, the agency's main centers were in places like Texas, Alabama, and Florida—the hear...
February 25, 2010 | By Tony Reichhardt

The 2009 Class of NASA astronauts: All dressed up, but nowhere to go.

No Stimulus Plan for Astronauts

For NASA's flying corps, it looks like 1975 all over again.
February 05, 2010 | By Matthew Hersch

Trail of tears: Spirit

No More A-Roving

NASA’s Spirit rover goes into survival mode on Mars.
January 28, 2010 | By Michael Klesius

Yuri Malenchenko, Peggy Whitson, and Dan Tani

Then and Now: Joy to the World

January 2010 | By Roger A. Mola

NASA's Bolden on International Cooperation

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden’s talk at a Women in Aerospace luncheon in Washington D.C. this week is worth watching. Four months into his tenure, Bolden seems as committed as ever to using NASA—and his own example—to push education and diversity.He also had interesting things to say about inte...
December 11, 2009 | By Tony Reichhardt

One For the Fred Heads

NASA is honoring former astronaut Fred Haise on December 2 with their Ambassadors of Exploration Award, given out every few months in recent years to the first generation of explorers who made the moon landings happen.Haise is usually remembered as one of the three astronauts, along with Jim Lovell...
November 25, 2009 | By Mike Klesius

A Moonwalker Views His Old Stomping Grounds

Having settled into a new, lower orbit just 31 miles above the lunar surface, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter recently passed over the Apollo 17 site.We emailed moonwalker Harrison Schmitt, the Apollo 17 lunar module pilot and the only geologist—the only scientist—to have walked on the moon, and a...
November 09, 2009 | By Mike Klesius

Practicing with a mockup of the <i>Spirit </i> rover n the "sandbox" at NASA

Freeing Spirit

NASA's Mars rover prepares to escape the worst trouble of its life.
November 09, 2009 | By Tony Reichhardt

“Little Joe” capsules were the precursors of Alan Shepard’s Mercury spacecraft.

How the Spaceship Got Its Shape

In the 1950s Harvey Allen solved the problem of atmospheric entry. But first he had to convince his colleagues.
November 2009 | By Andrew Chaikin


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