Smithsonian Voices

From the Smithsonian Museums

The pitch black night is illuminated by a bright white-hot rocket engine plume, which illuminates clouds of smoke surrounding the launch pad.

How Commercial Landers Are Changing Lunar Exploration

These companies are taking a faster, cheaper approach to landing on the moon

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Five Things On Board NASA's Artemis I Mission

This view of Gemini VII from VI-A in December 1965 shows the spacecraft’s orbital configuration.

Gemini VIII’s Near-Disaster

Christina Koch (left) poses for a portrait with Jessica Meir while preparing for their first spacewalk together. (Image courtesy of NASA)

A Seat in the Cockpit: Recognizing and Replacing Biases with Gender Inclusive Language

Artist’s conception of the Perseverance rover sampling rocks on the floor of Jezero crater. The rover also carries the Ingenuity helicopter (not shown) that can fly in advance of the rover and scout out high priority rocks and outcrops for the rover to visit. (NASA)

Is There Life on Mars?

Alan Shepard on the lunar surface of the Moon during Apollo 14 mission. Photographed by Edgar D. Mitchell still inside Antares. (NASA)

Lessons from Apollo 14

Jack Schmitt picking up the gnomon after collecting samples. This view is to the west toward the Lee Lincoln Scarp. Apollo image AS17-140-21496.

Small Steps and Giant Leaps in the Apollo Lunar Landings

Artist’s rendition of Ingenuity flying on Mars. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Driving Mars Exploration: How the Perseverance Rover Will Pave a Path into the Future

Perseverance Rover on Mars ( NASA Illustration)

Six Ways to Celebrate Perseverance This February

Carruthers holding one of the film cassettes that the astronauts brought back from the moon from his lunar camera/sectrograph. (NASA)

George Robert Carruthers: Astronautical Engineer and Astronomer

Two prominent lobate thrust fault scarps on Mercury, Discovery Rupes and Beagles Rupes, imaged by Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) on the MESSENGER spacecraft. Discovery Rupes (left), named for the ship HMS Discovery, shown here in a MDIS high-incidence angle image mosaic, was first imaged by Mariner 10 in the mid-1970’s. Beagle Rupes (right), a bow-shaped fault scarp, was initial imaged during MESSENGER’s first flyby.

Mercury, The Not So Shrunken Planet

NASA astronaut and Pilot Victor Glover launched from the International Space Station on the agency’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission. (SpaceX)

Five Things We Learned from Victor Glover

The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Surface System Test-Bed (SSTB) is nearly identical to the MER twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity that landed on Mars in 2004. Photo by Mark Avino, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM2020-00501).

A Mars Rover Lands in Virginia

This American flag was left on the International Space Station by the crew of STS-135, the last space shuttle mission, with the intention of it being retrieved by the next crew to launch from American soil.

Launching Astronauts from American Soil: Why is it Important?

Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley walk through Crew Access Arm in SpaceX spacesuits during a dress rehearsal for the first crewed SpaceX launch.

SpaceX Dragon Launch and Entry Suits

Space X's Crew Dragon spacecraft, which is part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program.

Redefining How NASA Gets into Space

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in the days before the first crewed launch of the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Launch Complex 39: From Saturn to Shuttle to SpaceX and SLS

Al Worden visits his Apollo 15 spacesuit at the National Air and Space Museum.

Our Friend Al Who Went to the Moon: Remembering Al Worden

Backup spacecraft for Telstar, the world's first active communications satellite. Telstar 1 began an era of live international television. After its launch on July 10, 1962, it relayed television images between the United States and France and England.

That’s no moon. (It's also not the Death Star.)

NASA's Project Mercury astronauts on April 9, 1959. Known as the Mercury Seven or Original Seven, they are (front row, left to right) Walter M.

Remembering Tom Wolfe and "The Right Stuff"

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