All Stories

We all need a little self-care these days, so in honor of the ISS's 20th anniversary, we’ll tell you about what astronaut life is like when they aren’t doing the extraordinary science, essential maintenance, and extraterrestrial chores necessary to sustain our home in space.

I became enamored of Star Trek back in the early 1970s, when it went into syndication after completing its three-year run on NBC in 1969. Many fans agree that the 1967-68 season produced some of the best episodes of the series, yet contrary to the opinion of most, I believe The Doomsday Machine is the best of them all.

Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, published a few years before the world’s first satellite was even launched (!), remains one of the most influential stories of human settlement on Mars ever published.

How do you cast your ballot when you are floating over 200 miles above your polling place? Thanks to a special electronic absentee ballot, astronauts are able to vote from space.

Throughout his long life, famed science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke corresponded with numerous people. This blog examine the correspondents that Clarke had with Stanley Kubrick, rocket scientist and pioneer Wernher von Braun, and Irish fantasy author Edward Plunkett, who published under the name Lord Dunsany.

The Archives of the National Air and Space Museum holds three million images in various photographic formats, covering the breadth and depth of the history of aviation and space flight. One such collection is the Herbert Stephen Desind Collection, which covers the history of space flight and exploration.  

Reading Mark Wick’s novel To Mars Via the Moon words motivated reflection on how our thinking of the Moon changed as real-life science and technology has evolved, in contrast to science ficton.

A new Mars rover has landed at the Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Surface System Test-Bed (SSTB) is nearly identical to the MER twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity that landed on Mars in 2004. What makes the SSTB different, however, is that it was designed for use on Earth.

Leaving Earth on your way to Mars, the first pit stop you might make is the Moon’s orbit. In this episode, we follow three Mars-bound space travelers from Mark Wicks’ novel, To Mars via the Moon.

If you had $500 MILLION dollars to spend going anywhere in the solar system (rocket not included), where would YOU go? That’s exactly what NASA asks scientists in its Discovery Program.