Apollo 12 Astronaut Pete Conrad has a lot to live up to. NASA’s idea of the astronaut image meant that the astronauts needed to conform to specific ideas of the ideal American.
After the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the Moon, they embarked on an equally fascinating journey: a global goodwill press tour in Air Force One. Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony explains the importance of the tour and how the astronauts’ lives changed post-Moon landing.
Buzz Aldrin, the second human to set foot on the Moon, recalls the Apollo 11 mission and how one felt tip pen helped the astronauts successfully return to Earth.
Jerrie Cobb and the women behind the Women in Space program unsuccessfully lobbied Congress in 1962 to include women in astronaut training, but they still led the way for women’s inclusion in the aerospace industry.
When the United States was lagging behind the Soviet Union in the race to space, the Soviet space agency announced plans to send women into space, which spurred American astronaut trainers to consider what might happen if they did the same.
Our interview with NASA astronaut Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, part of our series titled Failure is Not an Option, asks crowd sourced questions to reveal what life is like in space and how Dottie, as a woman astronaut, continues to inspire young women to pursue careers in STEM.
As the first installment of our “Failure Is Not An Option” summer series—an ode to people who have pushed the boundaries of space exploration, our interview with Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger includes questions that our listeners shared with us on social media and revealing answers from Dottie about astronaut bands, sw
This special holiday podcast features an interview with NASA historian Bill Barry who explains how the Apollo 8 mission showed how the pursuit of space can be a unifying force in a divided world.
As SpaceX and Blue Origin continue to make history by building rockets that will take future space vacationers to the Moon or Mars, the Museum is thinking about how to preserve the history of these private companies. Back in the 1960’s and up until now, it was easy for historians to access public records at NASA that documented the space race; and that’s not the case now. According to our Adjunct Curator for Space History, Geoff Nunn, “corporate archives are becoming ever more important, but private records don’t automatically make their way through the public record trail like NASA documents did.” Geoff and other space historians now have to ask themselves, “How do you archive a Slack thread?” and “What happens when YouTube goes under and we no longer have videos of launches?”
Did you know that for every month you spend in space, you lose about 2% BMI? Neither did we until we talked to Tommy Gantz, one of our volunteers and resident space experts.
Dick Gordon passed away in November 2017, and author and volunteer Jake Schultz had the honor of recording Gordon’s oral history few months prior to learn about his experiences as an astronaut.
