All Stories

In October 1961, three chimpanzees were brought to Cape Canaveral to join two already there. One of the new arrivals was Enos, a native of Cameroon in west central Africa. Discover the story of the often forgotten chimp and his contribution to human space travel.

I’m an executive producer at Smithsonian Channel and I had the pleasure of making the documentary Making Tracks on Mars. We made our film feel like an adventure because most people think of Mars as a frontier, but at its core, the story taps into our primal drive to explore.

Be a part of the Perseverance landing with these six ways of celebrating the rover's mission!

Based on my research, which include image composites of two flyby views of Mercury from the MESSENGER spacecraft, I conclude that Mercury has not cooled and shrunken as much as previously thought.

The InSight lander, designed to study the interior of Mars, is the latest in a history of NASA lander and rover missions that goes back to the 1970s.

The international community has contributed more to the exploration of space and our understanding of the universe than you might think. From India to Israel, lots of countries are sending missions to Mars, landing on comets, and observing Earth from orbit.

Sputnik, the world’s first human-made satellite of the Earth, was launched on October 4, 1957, marking the beginning of the Space Age and the modern world in which we live today.

On April 7, 2017, New Horizons entered a 157-day-long hibernation. New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe and is NASA’s first mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. After operating steadily for almost two and a half years, the spacecraft and its systems deserve this much-needed break.

The Cassini spacecraft has spent almost 13 years exploring the beautiful giant planet Saturn and its amazingly diverse moons. Cassini’s mission will end in September when it plunges into Saturn’s atmosphere, but it will leave behind a wealth of knowledge and wonder.

On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space. However, three months earlier NASA had launched “Number 65” on a mission that helped pave the way for Shephard’s momentous flight. Number 65 was a male chimpanzee born in 1957 in the French Cameroons in West Africa.