All Stories

The Apollo program should be remembered as much for landing the first humans on the Moon as it is for countless demonstrations of problem solving and ingenuity, of continual fine-tuning and honing of expertise, which enabled NASA to set even more ambitious goals with each successive mission.

The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 14 mission, which included the longest moonwalk without a rover, is a good time to show how traverses away from the lunar landers progressed from one mission to the next.

Astronautical engineer and astronomer George Robert Carruthers, a name well-known and dearly regarded in the space science community, and a good friend of the National Air and Space Museum, passed away on Saturday, December 26 after a long illness.

We’ve talked about planetary protection on the pod before, but it’s never felt closer to home than now, so we’re digging a little deeper into what it takes to keep our planet safe from space germs and keep space safe from Earth germs.

Curator Margaret Weitekamps shares a new artifact to join our collection: the Congressional Space Medal of Honor awarded to astronaut Neil Armstrong.

Carolyn Russo, curator of the Museum's art collection, reflects of the work of Alma W. Thomas.

On the same day that a commercially-built spacecraft docked with the ISS for the first time, cities across this nation experienced widespread protests sparked by profound racial disparities. The confluence of events drew comparisons to 1968 and 1969, when successful flights to the Moon occurred in the midst of a similarly fraught moment. Curator Margaret Weitekamp reflects.

Space historian Paul Ceruzzi looks at a less well-known detail of the Apollo 13 mission: the Inertial Measurement Unit, which was essential to ensuring the safe return of the astronauts after an explosion damaged the service module on the way to the Moon.　

Deputy director Chris Browne reflects on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission.

Conservator Lauren Gottschlich explores the conservation work recently done on a replica of the altered lithium hydroxide filter used during the Apollo 13 mission.