
OTD in 1981, a new era began with the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle, STS-1. […]
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![]() Steve Hawley releases the Hubble Space Telescope from Discovery’s robotic arm, on this day in 1990. Photo Credit: NASA Thirty years ago today, the hands of humans and robots parted company with the Hubble Space Telescope for the final time before it began its momentous voyage to explore the Universe. Almost two decades in […] ![]() Apollo 13 back on Earth. Photo: NASA By the middle of April 1970, Project Apollo—America’s effort to land a man on the lunar surface—had reached one of its most decisive points of crisis. As described in last weekend’s AmericaSpace history feature, an explosion rocked the Apollo 13 spacecraft, halfway to the Moon, destroying one […] ![]() Apollo 13’s Latin motto of “Ex Luna, Scientia” (“From the Moon, Knowledge”) highlighted this mission as a voyage of exploration and scientific endeavor. Image Credit: NASA By the spring of 1970, six months had passed since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin triumphantly fulfilled President John F. Kennedy’s pledge to land a man on the […] ![]() The Apollo 10 and 11 crews in discussion, after the completion of the Apollo 10 mission. Around the table from foreground are Apollo 11 Command Module Pilot (CMP) Mike Collins, Apollo 11 Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 10 LMP Gene Cernan, Apollo 10 Commander Tom Stafford, Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong and […] ![]() The rugged, forbidding lunar landscape, seen from Apollo 10. Photo Credit: NASA Four hours after a bone-jarring launch from Cape Kennedy—marking the first-ever space mission to originate from Pad 39B—and an equally rattling ride through Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI), on 18 May 1969 the crew of Apollo 10 were finally on their way to the […] ![]() It was no understatement that Charlie Brown and Snoopy were everywhere in the days leading up to (and during) the Apollo 10 mission. Here Snoopy, clad in bubble helmet and trademark scarf, sits with Charlie on a console in Mission Control. Photo Credit: NASA Snoopy, the little black-and-white dog from the Peanuts comic strip, […] |