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Apollo Program

The Apollo 10 Command Module, "Charlie Brown," as seen from the detached Lunar Module, "Snoopy."

A Smithsonian Curator Reflects on Apollo 10, the Mission That Made Landing on the Moon Possible

Fifty years ago, the astronauts who crewed the “dress rehearsal” for Apollo 11 paved the way for history to be made just a couple months later

To all the looney lunar landing deniers and conspiracy theorists out there, NASA has just four words to say: "Apollo: Yes, We Did."

Apollo at 50: We Choose to Go to the Moon

Yes, the United States Certainly DID Land Humans on the Moon

Moon-landing deniers, says space scholar and former NASA chief historian Roger Launius, are full of stuff and nonsense

The Lee Lincoln Scarp, one of the potentially active faults on the Moon.

New Research

The Moon Is Slowly Shrinking, Which May Be Causing ‘Moonquakes’ on Its Surface

Analysis of seismic data collected on the Apollo missions shows the moon is probably tectonically active

Francis Rogallo (above, in 1959 in a wind tunnel at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia) along with his wife Gertrude, originally conceived of their paraglider in the mid-1940s to make aviation more practical and economically available to more aviators.

The Paraglider That NASA Could Have Used, but Didn’t, to Bring Astronauts Back to Earth

Francis Rogallo’s invention would have brought returning space vehicles in for a runway landing, instead of an ocean splashdown

Jennifer Levasseur from the National Air and Space Museum notes that the museum’s supply of popular astronaut foods is less comprehensive than its collection of rejects. “We only get what they didn’t eat (above: Apollo 17's spiced fruit cereal is now in the collections)."

Rita Rapp Fed America’s Space Travelers

NASA’s food packages now in the collections of the Air and Space Museum tell the story of how a physiologist brought better eating to outer space

An artist's concept of the Axel rover rappelling into a lunar pit.

NASA Considers a Rover Mission to Go Cave Diving on the Moon

The deep caverns and pits that dot the lunar surface could hold clues to the moon’s history and perhaps provide shelter for future human exploration

Margaret Hamilton stands next to a stack of program listings from the Apollo Guidance Computer in a photograph taken in 1969.

Women Who Shaped History

Margaret Hamilton Led the NASA Software Team That Landed Astronauts on the Moon

Apollo’s successful computing software was optimized to deal with unknown problems and to interrupt one task to take on a more important one

Apollo 14 Astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. assembles equipment on the lunar surface on February 6, 1971.

Earth’s Oldest Known Rock May Have Been Found on the Moon

Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space, collected the rock sample during Apollo 14

Gutenberg Castle in Balzers, Liechtenstein.

Twelve Anniversaries and Events Worth Traveling For in 2019

2019 will mark Singapore’s bicentennial, the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death and a total solar eclipse in South America

1960s science fiction illustration of lunar exploration.

The Missions to the Moon That Never Left the Drawing Board

From pioneers of science fiction to the height of the space race, these are the ideas for lunar flight that never launched

Beneath the Space Window at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where a seven-gram sample of moon rock is incorporated into the design, a sold-out crowd gathered this week for the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 8.

NASA Won’t Be Going ‘Back’ to the Moon—It Wants to Go Beyond It

At a 50th-anniversary event for Apollo 8, NASA’s Jim Bridenstine envisioned the moon’s potential for future space exploration

“Everyone involved accomplished many, many firsts with that flight,” says Smithsonian curator Teasel Muir-Harmony. of NASA's near-perfect mission, (above: Apollo 8 command module).

How Apollo 8 ‘Saved 1968’

The unforgettable, 99.9 percent perfect, December moon mission marked the end of a tumultuous year

Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong in First Man.

Smithsonian Curator Reflects on What ‘First Man’ Gets Right About Neil Armstrong’s Journey to the Moon

The new film lays bare the personal sacrifice and peril that accompanied NASA’s historic mission

Armstrong’s pressurized spacesuit, measuring nearly 5 feet 7 inches tall, featured anodized aluminum gauges and valves. (Detail)

The Latest on the Kickstarter Campaign to Conserve Neil Armstrong’s Spacesuit

As a new biopic blasts off, the protective suit worn by the ‘First Man’ on the moon is readied for its star turn

This Apollo 8 Astronaut Took the Famous “Earthrise” Photo

Once in orbit, astronaut William Anders takes one of the most legendary photographs of all time

Cool Finds

These Rare NASA Photos Were Saved From the Trash

The 1,500 press images up for sale cover the agency’s manned missions from 1961 to 1972

A Timeline of 1968: The Year That Shattered America

The nation is still reckoning with the changes that came in that fateful year

Hours after witnessing the first Earthrise, Jim Lovell told mission control: “The Earth from here is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space.”

1968: The Year That Shattered America

Who Took the Legendary Earthrise Photo From Apollo 8?

The mission returned to Earth with one of the most famous images in history

Apollo 17's Saturn V launch vehicle sits atop pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Apollo 17 Was the Swan Song of Manned Space Exploration

Looking back 45 years later, is there hope humanity will once again push beyond Earth? President Donald Trump seems to think so

The Moon Landing Was the Television Event of the Decade

On June 16, 1969, Americans filled highways, streets and homes to witness the launch of a rocket from the Kennedy Space Center: the legendary Apollo 11

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