All Stories

Aerospace pioneers make all kinds of new discoveries during their careers—some even find that special someone along the way.

Over fifteen years after the Columbia tragedy, Michael D. Leinbach, Space Shuttle Launch Director, and Jonathan H. Ward, space historian, look back at the harrowing process of recovering the spacecraft. 

NASA Astronaut and USAF command pilot Alvin Drew shares his reflections on a lifetime of exploring the universe.

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the Columbia disaster.  Every year on this date I think about the crew of the Columbia, my students, and my most difficult day as a teacher. 

For those involved or interested in human spaceflight, the last week of January is a solemn time of remembrance, as we commemorate Apollo 1 and the Space Shuttle missions Challenger and Columbia. How does our Museum deal with the memory of such tragedies? 

As an astronaut, John Young (1930-2018) was one of a kind. He was the first person to fly in space six times, the first person to circle the Moon alone, the first Space Shuttle mission commander, and the first to command another Space Shuttle mission.

Bruce McCandless II (1937-2017) is immortalized in this iconic photograph of an astronaut flying solo high above Earth. He was the first human being to do a spacewalk without a safety tether linked to a spacecraft.

Guion Bluford made history on August 30, 1983 when he became the first African American in space, launching into low Earth orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. He subsequently flew aboard three additional shuttle missions, logging a total of 688 hours in space.

On this day in 2005, Discovery astronaut Stephen K. Robinson became the first person to do a spacewalk underneath a space shuttle orbiter.

The Challenger explosion is one of the most significant events of the 1980s. The crew members of represented a cross section of the America.