All Stories

Did you know the National Air and Space Museum has a huge art collection? Yeah, we keep that secret pretty well. It all STEMs (see what we did there?) from a program organized by NASA beginning in the 1960s where a small number of American artists got tons of access to launch sites, clean rooms, space suits, spacecraft—you name it, they painted it.

On May 5, 1961, a Redstone rocket hurled Alan Shepard’s Mercury capsule, Freedom 7, 116 miles high and 302 miles downrange from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Freedom 7 parachuted into the Atlantic just 15 minutes and 22 seconds later, after attaining a maximum velocity of 5,180 mph. Shepard, a Navy test pilot and NASA astronaut, became the first American to fly in space.

On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American to travel to space.

Any child of the 80s or 90s knows about Space Camp. But, what’s its origin story? And how did it become such a part of the millennial zeitgeist? (Even Mary Kate and Ashley solved a Space Camp mystery—spoiler alert: it was woodpeckers). Emily, Matt, and Nick break it down.

Every year in Russia during the week of April 12, the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight in space, also known as Cosmonautics Day, one hears Gagarin’s March replayed on radio and websites. The musical piece paints a picture of a bright and enthusiastic trek into the Soviet future with Gagarin at the lead.

The legacy of the Space Shuttle program was to some degree built around the results of its very first mission. The reusable spaceplane, the Space Shuttle, ushered in a new era of human spaceflight 40 years ago this week with the launch of STS-1 on April 12, 1981.

Our conservators and curators recently faced an interesting question: Is it practical to retain perishable material and what long-range obligations are required? To find the answers, a collaborative effort was required, allowing for preservation of our collection of space food.

Some of the language once used in the early days of human spaceflight has not kept pace with the evolution of America’s space program. We now use "crewed" or "piloted" instead of "manned," for example. The era of “manned” spaceflight ended long ago, and the continued use of this language diminishes and erases six decades of women’s contributions to spaceflight.

Remembering the life and legacy of NASA flight director Glynn Lunney.

On March 16, 1966, the Gemini VIII astronauts made the world’s first space docking, quickly followed by the first life-threatening, in-flight emergency in the short history of the U.S. human spaceflight program.