The Project Apollo Archive is NASA fan Kipp Teague’s collection of previously unavailable pictures of NASA’s space history, from pre-Apollo program to present. We’ve paired some of them with buried quotes from the mission transcripts that show the grainy, gritty, and funny side of space exploration.
Pretty neat!
April 18, 1969 – Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong trains for the exploration of the surface of the Moon. (NASA)
Alaska’s Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve offers exploration in a vast and pristine landscape. The park is a haven largely untouched by glaciation and mostly free of human imprint with prime breeding grounds for the endangered peregrine falcon, calving grounds for caribou, choice paleontological sites, superb recreational waters, and the timeless presence of the mighty and historic Yukon River. Photo by Josh Spice, National Park Service.
Ranging over 4 million acres in southwest Alaska, Lake Clark National Park & Preserve offers excellent opportunities for adventure, exploration, learning and just plain fun. However, it can be hard to get a lot done when all you want to do is stare at the epic views. Photo along the Telaquana River by J. Mills, National Park Service.
You may remember that back in February, four crew members lived and worked inside our Human Research Exploration Analog (HERA). That crew, made up of 4 women, simulated a 715-day journey to a Near-Earth asteroid. That 30 day mission helped our researchers learn how isolation and close quarters affect individual and group behavior. Studies like this at our Johnson Space Center prepare us for long duration space missions, like a trip to an asteroid or even to Mars.
We now have another crew, made up of four men, living and working inside the HERA. This is the spacecraft’s 10th crew. The mission began on May 3, and will end on June 1.
The crew members are currently living inside this compact, science-making house. But unlike in a normal house, these inhabitants won’t go outside for 30 days. Their communication with the rest of planet Earth will also be very limited, and they won’t have any access to internet. The only people they will talk with regularly are mission control and each other.
The HERA X crew is made up of four males selected from the Johnson Space Center Test Subject Screening (TSS) pool. The crew member selection process is based on a number of criteria, including the same criteria for astronaut selection. The four would-be astronauts are:
Lisa Spence, the Human Research Program’s Flight Analogs Project Manager, explained that ideally they would like the four-person crews to be two males and two females. Due to the applicant pool, HERA IX was an all female crew, and HERA X (this current mission) is all male.
What will they be doing?
The crew will test hardware prototypes to get “the bugs worked out” before they are used in off-Earth missions. They will conduct experiments involving plants, brine shrimp, and creating a pice of equipment with a 3D printer. After their visit to an asteroid, the crew will simulate the processing of soil and rocks they collected virtually. Researchers outside of the spacecraft will collect data regarding team dynamics, conflict resolution and the effects of extended isolation and confinement.
How real is a HERA mission?
When we set up an analog research investigation, we try to mimic as many of the spaceflight conditions as we can. This simulation means that even when communicating with mission control, there will be a delay on all communications ranging from 1 to 5 minutes each way, depending on how far their simulated spacecraft is from Earth.
Obviously we are not in microgravity, so none of the effects of microgravity on the human or the vehicle can be tested. You can mimic isolation to some degree – although the crew knows they are note really isolated from humanity, the communications delays and ban from social media help them to suspend reality. We mimic confinement and the stress that goes along with it.
Scientists and researchers use analogs like HERA to gather more data for comparison to data collected aboard the space station and from other analogs so they can draw conclusions needed for a real mission to deep space, and one day for a journey to Mars.
A few other details:
Past HERA crew members wore a sensor that recorded heart rate, distance, motion and sound intensity. When crew members were working together, the sensor would also record their proximity as well, helping investigators learn about team cohesion.
Researchers also learned about how crew members react to stress by recording and analyzing verbal interactions and by analyzing “markers” in blood and saliva samples.
In total, this mission will include 22 individual investigations across key human research elements. From psychological to physiological experiments, the crew members will help prepare us for future missions.
Want a full, 360 degree look at HERA? Check out and explore the inside of the habitat.
For more information on our Human Research Program, visit: www.nasa.gov/hrp.
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In the 1940s, an elite team of mathematicians and scientists started working on a project that would carry the U.S. into space, then onto the moon and Mars. They would eventually become NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (or JPL), but here’s what made them so unusual: Many of the people who charted the course to space exploration were actually women.
Nathalia Holt tells their story in her new book, Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars. Holt tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro that the women worked as “computers.”
“In a time before the digital devices that we’re used to today, it was humans that were doing the calculations,” she says. “And so you needed these teams of people — many of whom were women, especially during World War II — and they were responsible for the math.”
Barbara Paulson was one of those women. She tells Shapiro that while her sisters were preparing to be secretaries, she took a different path. She says, “I had had quite a bit of math in high school. … I know my mother certainly wanted us all to graduate from college, but why I veered off into this … I can’t remember. … But I did, and it helped me get the job that I did get at JPL.”
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When the South Atlantic Ocean was young, sea monsters ruled it.
Some of their bones have turned up along the coast of West Africa and are going on exhibit Friday at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. They tell a story of the bloody birth of an ocean.
The fossils of giant swimming reptiles called mosasaurs have been found in the rocky cliffs of Angola, overlooking the Atlantic. It’s not a country known for fossils. Few scientists have looked there — half a century of civil war made it too dangerous. But geologically, Angola is special.
About 200 million years ago, Africa was part of the supercontinent Gondwana. Then, about 135 million years ago, that continent started unzipping down the middle. Among the remnants were Africa and South America, which slowly drifted apart. The South Atlantic Ocean filled in the gap between them. It was a time of oceanic turmoil: huge changes in sea level and temperature. It was a brand new habitat, and sea creatures fought to own it.
Photos: Madeleine Cook and Meredith Rizzo/NPR
It’s yellow. The most exciting color to be.
Tap it to see your GIF-ables—videos, bursts, Live Photos—or shoot a new GIF on the spot. Isn’t it incredible what science can do?
Like, right on your GIFs. In three different fonts, infinite font sizes, and in every color you could reasonably expect. Try these fun tricks:
iOS is coming out now, Android will be right behind.
Good to know!
A key question that’s often left out of #retirement planning: Will seniors have enough income to afford the local cost of living?
