97 Fun Facts About NASA

In what year was NASA established?

NASA was established in 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, succeeding the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA).

Who was the first American in space?

Alan Shepard made a 15-minute suborbital flight on 5 May 1961 and, a decade later at 47, commanded Apollo 14 as the oldest of the Apollo moonwalkers.

Which NASA program successfully landed humans on the Moon?

The program ended with its December 1972 mission; no human has travelled beyond low Earth orbit since.

What famous space telescope was launched in 1990?

The Hubble Space Telescope went up with a mirror ground to the wrong shape; a 1993 shuttle repair fitted corrective optics, and it is still working decades later.

Which rocket launched Artemis I on its uncrewed trip around the Moon in November 2022?

The Space Launch System made its debut on 16 November 2022, lifting the uncrewed Artemis I capsule from Kennedy's Pad 39B toward the Moon on its first flight.

Who was the first administrator of NASA?

T. Keith Glennan was NASA's first administrator, serving from its October 1958 start until January 1961, then returned to the presidency of the Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland.

Which space shuttle tragically broke apart during re-entry in 2003?

The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry to Earth's atmosphere on February 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts, due to damage sustained during launch.

What is the name of the first Mars rover successfully landed by NASA?

Sojourner rode down with the Mars Pathfinder lander on July 4, 1997, and outlived its planned seven-day mission by nearly three months, operating until late September.

Between them, NASA's two Voyager probes flew past which four planets?

Between them the Voyagers visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune: Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter and Saturn, while Voyager 2 went on to Uranus (1986) and Neptune (1989), the first spacecraft to reach either.

Who was the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission, flying STS-93 in 1999?

Eileen Collins commanded STS-93 in July 1999, which deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory; she had been the first woman to pilot the shuttle on STS-63 in 1995 and later commanded the 2005 return-to-flight mission.

Who was the first American woman in space?

Sally Ride was only the third woman in space, after two Soviet cosmonauts, and later became the first American woman to fly twice.

NASA's 'Great Observatories' program included which four major space telescopes?

Each covered a different slice of the spectrum, and the four launched between 1990 and 2003.

What does the acronym NASA stand for?

NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration; created by the 1958 Space Act as a civilian agency, it absorbed 8,000 staff and three laboratories from its predecessor.

What was the first satellite successfully launched by the United States?

Explorer 1, launched on 31 January 1958 by an Army rocket from Cape Canaveral, carried instruments that first detected the Van Allen radiation belt and transmitted for nearly four months.

Which mission was the first time a US spacecraft docked in orbit with one from another country?

In July 1975, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project saw an American Apollo spacecraft dock with a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft, symbolizing a thawing of Cold War tensions and paving the way for future international cooperation.

What is the primary observation wavelength for the James Webb Space Telescope?

The James Webb Space Telescope is designed to observe the universe primarily in infrared light, allowing it to peer through dust and gas and study the early universe.

Which NASA facility in Houston houses Mission Control for human spaceflight?

Johnson Space Center in Houston has hosted Mission Control since Gemini 4 in 1965, which is why crews call 'Houston'; it was named for Lyndon Johnson in 1973.

Who was the first person to walk on the Moon?

Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon on 20 July 1969 during Apollo 11, saying 'That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind'; Buzz Aldrin followed about 19 minutes later.

NASA framed the Artemis program as a stepping stone to crewed missions to which destination?

Mars: Space Policy Directive 1, signed in December 2017, directed a return to the Moon 'followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations', the framing NASA shortened to 'Moon to Mars'.

What was the name of the first American space station?

Skylab was occupied for only about 24 weeks in 1973-74, then fell out of orbit in 1979, scattering debris across Western Australia.

What year was the Space Shuttle program officially retired?

The Space Shuttle program concluded its 30 years of operations with the final landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on July 21, 2011.

Which NASA rover, landed in 2012, captured a famous 'selfie' on Mars?

Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory rover, landed in August 2012 and assembles its self-portraits from dozens of frames taken by the MAHLI camera on its robotic arm.

What is the name of the rocket that launched the Apollo missions to the Moon?

The Saturn V was a super heavy-lift launch vehicle developed by NASA for the Apollo program, powerful enough to send humans and spacecraft to the Moon.

Which NASA space telescope, launched in 2018, scans the brightest nearby stars for exoplanets?

TESS launched on a Falcon 9 on 18 April 2018 to watch for the tiny dips in starlight as planets cross their stars, and covered about three-quarters of the sky in its first two years.

Which module of the International Space Station (ISS) went up first?

Zarya, whose name means 'sunrise', was the first ISS module: Russian-built but American-funded, it launched on a Proton rocket on 20 November 1998, two weeks before Unity joined it.

Which former astronaut, the first American to orbit Earth, later served multiple terms as a U.S. Senator?

John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth on 20 February 1962, represented Ohio in the Senate from 1974 to 1999, and flew again on STS-95 in 1998 at age 77.

NASA's New Horizons probe made history in 2015 with its close flyby of which dwarf planet?

Pluto was still a full planet when New Horizons launched in 2006, and was demoted to dwarf planet before the year was out.

Which university founded and manages NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory?

Caltech: the lab grew out of Caltech rocket experiments in the Arroyo Seco in 1936 and has been run by the university for NASA as a federally funded research center in La Cañada Flintridge.

Which NASA mission was the first to send a probe to orbit Mars?

Mariner 9 entered Mars orbit on 14 November 1971, beating the Soviet Mars 2 orbiter by less than two weeks, and arrived during a planet-wide dust storm that hid the surface for months.

What is the primary purpose of NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN)?

The Deep Space Network exists to communicate with interplanetary spacecraft: its antenna sites at Goldstone, Madrid and Canberra sit about 120 degrees apart so at least one can always see any distant probe.

Which NASA mission in 1976 was the first to land a working spacecraft on Mars and photograph its surface?

Viking 1 touched down on July 20, 1976, seven years to the day after Apollo 11, and sent back the first clear picture from the Martian surface.

Who was the first African American woman to travel into space?

Mae C. Jemison flew on STS-47 in September 1992, a joint U.S.-Japan Spacelab mission and the 50th shuttle flight; she later appeared in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

What is the crew capsule of NASA's Artemis lunar program?

Orion is the Artemis crew capsule: its first flight was an uncrewed loop around the Moon on Artemis I in November 2022; Lockheed Martin builds the crew module and ESA the service module.

Which NASA facility in Huntsville, Alabama, is its rocketry and propulsion hub?

Marshall Space Flight Center opened in 1960 with Wernher von Braun as its first director and went on to develop the Saturn V stages and manage the shuttle's engines, boosters and external tank.

What year did the first American spacewalk occur?

Ed White made the first American spacewalk on 3 June 1965, floating outside Gemini 4 for about 20 minutes and calling his return to the capsule 'the saddest moment of my life'.

Which NASA probe made the first flyby of Jupiter, in December 1973?

Pioneer 10 passed Jupiter on 3 December 1973, the first spacecraft to cross the asteroid belt and reach an outer planet; it carried a gold plaque showing a man, a woman and Earth's location.

Which NASA mission was the first to send a spacecraft into interstellar space?

Voyager 1, launched in 1977, made history on August 25, 2012, when it crossed the heliopause and entered interstellar space, the region between stars.

Which NASA facility on Merritt Island has been its main crewed launch site since 1968?

Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building, completed in 1966 to stack the Saturn V, encloses about 3.7 million cubic metres, making it one of the largest buildings in the world by volume.

What was the name of the Apollo 11 lunar module?

Eagle carried Armstrong and Aldrin to the Sea of Tranquility on 20 July 1969, prompting the call 'The Eagle has landed'; Falcon and Intrepid were the Apollo 15 and 12 landers.

What is the primary scientific objective of NASA's Parker Solar Probe?

Parker Solar Probe was built to study the Sun's outer corona from inside it; named for physicist Eugene Parker, it passed within 3.8 million miles of the solar surface on 24 December 2024.

How many crewed landings on the Moon did NASA carry out between 1969 and 1972?

Six: Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 landed between July 1969 and December 1972, putting twelve people on the Moon; Apollo 13 aborted after an oxygen tank exploded.

What type of engine powers the core stage of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket?

Four RS-25 engines power the SLS core stage; the first flights reused engines that had flown on the Space Shuttle, and the twin boosters are stretched five-segment versions of the shuttle's.

Which California NASA center builds and operates robotic spacecraft and manages the Deep Space Network?

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is the only NASA center staffed by a university's employees rather than civil servants; it built both Voyagers and every NASA Mars rover.

What was the primary goal of Project Mercury, the United States' first human spaceflight program?

Project Mercury's goal was to orbit a man and return him safely, ideally before the Soviets; six crewed flights flew from 1961 to 1963, the last lasting over a day.

Which NASA mission launched the first American into Earth orbit?

Mercury-Atlas 6 (Friendship 7) made the first American orbital flight on 20 February 1962: three orbits in just under five hours, matching the Soviets' feat ten months later.

Which region beyond Neptune did New Horizons explore after 2015, flying past Arrokoth in 2019?

The Kuiper Belt stretches from about 30 to 50 AU from the Sun; New Horizons flew past the belt object Arrokoth, a contact binary about 35 km long, on New Year's Day 2019.

Who became the first woman to command the International Space Station, leading Expedition 16 in 2007?

Peggy Whitson commanded the station again on Expedition 51 in 2017, the first woman to do so twice, and in 2017 set the U.S. record for cumulative days in space at 665.

Which Apollo 13 crew member was a late replacement after Ken Mattingly was exposed to rubella?

Jack Swigert, the backup command module pilot, replaced Mattingly days before launch; Mattingly never caught rubella and flew to the Moon on Apollo 16, while Swigert radioed 'Houston, we've had a problem'.

Which Apollo 8 astronaut took the famous Earthrise photograph in December 1968?

William Anders shot Earthrise on 24 December 1968 after calling for colour film as Earth rose over the lunar horizon; Life later listed it among its hundred photographs that changed the world.

The fatal Apollo 1 cabin fire of January 1967 broke out during what kind of rehearsal?

It was a 'plugs-out' test: the spacecraft ran on internal power with umbilicals disconnected when a spark ignited the pure-oxygen cabin on 27 January 1967, killing Grissom, White and Chaffee.

How many seconds after liftoff did Challenger break apart in January 1986?

A rubber O-ring stiffened by the cold morning let booster flame burn through, ending the flight 73 seconds after liftoff; Reagan postponed that night's State of the Union.

Who was the only professional geologist among the Apollo moonwalkers?

Harrison Schmitt, a Harvard-trained geologist, flew on Apollo 17 in December 1972 after the scientific community pressed NASA to send a scientist rather than another test pilot.

What piece of hardware made its debut on Apollo 15 in 1971?

The Lunar Roving Vehicle first drove on Apollo 15; the battery-powered buggy let the crew range miles from the lander, turning the flight into a longer 'J' mission with a three-day surface stay.

What did the Apollo 14 commander famously hit on the lunar surface with a makeshift club?

Golf balls: Alan Shepard's club was a Wilson six-iron head bolted to a sample-tool handle, and one ball ended up in a crater alongside a 'javelin' thrown by Edgar Mitchell.

Which aeronautics agency, founded in 1915, was dissolved on October 1, 1958, so its staff and labs could become NASA?

NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, began as a 12-member unpaid committee with a $5,000 annual budget.

Which NASA aircraft made the first powered, controlled flight on another planet in 2021?

Ingenuity, the helicopter carried under the Perseverance rover, rose 3 metres and hovered for about 30 seconds on 19 April 2021, the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.

NASA's Perseverance rover landed in which Martian crater, chosen for its ancient river delta?

Jezero, whose name means 'lake' in several Slavic languages, holds a fossil river delta; Perseverance landed there on 18 February 2021 and has drilled and cached rock cores for possible return to Earth.

The Mars Science Laboratory rover touched down in which crater in August 2012?

Gale Crater, 154 km wide, has a layered central mountain, officially Aeolis Mons but better known as Mount Sharp, which the rover has spent its mission climbing.

Which rover's last 2018 message was rendered as 'My battery is low and it's getting dark'?

Opportunity fell silent on 10 June 2018 when a planet-wide dust storm blotted out its solar panels, after more than 14 years of driving on a mission designed to last 90 days.

NASA's InSight lander was sent to Mars in 2018 primarily to deploy what kind of instrument?

A seismometer: the French-built SEIS instrument recorded more than a thousand marsquakes between 2019 and 2022, giving scientists their first look at the layered interior of another rocky planet.

Which NASA spacecraft entered a polar orbit of Jupiter in July 2016?

Juno arrived on 4 July 2016 and is named for the Roman goddess who could see through her husband Jupiter's veil of clouds; it carries three Lego figurines of Jupiter, Juno and Galileo.

Cassini ended its mission in 2017 by plunging into the atmosphere of which planet?

Cassini dived into Saturn on 15 September 2017 after 13 years in orbit; the 'Grand Finale' dives between the planet and its rings ended with the probe burning up like a meteor.

The ESA-built Huygens probe, carried by NASA's Cassini, landed by parachute on which moon?

Titan: Huygens descended by parachute for about 2.5 hours through the moon's thick nitrogen atmosphere and touched down on 14 January 2005, about 1.2 billion km from Earth.

Why was the Galileo orbiter deliberately crashed into Jupiter in 2003?

To avoid contaminating Europa: with little fuel left, a derelict Galileo might one day have struck the icy moon and its suspected subsurface ocean, so NASA steered it into Jupiter on 21 September 2003.

NASA's Magellan spacecraft used synthetic-aperture radar to map the surface of which planet?

Venus: radar was essential because the planet's thick clouds hide its surface from cameras; between 1990 and 1994 Magellan mapped 98 percent of Venus at about 100-metre resolution.

Which NASA probe orbited the planet Mercury from 2011 to 2015?

MESSENGER orbited Mercury from March 2011 until it ran out of fuel and crashed in April 2015; its name is a backronym for Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging.

Which NASA probe was the first spacecraft to orbit two different extraterrestrial bodies?

Dawn used ion propulsion to orbit the protoplanet Vesta for 14 months in 2011–12 and then the dwarf planet Ceres from 2015 until its fuel ran out in 2018, a first for any spacecraft.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx dropped a sample capsule into the Utah desert in 2023 after visiting which near-Earth asteroid?

Bennu is a carbonaceous asteroid, and after dropping its capsule the spacecraft was redirected to Apophis for that asteroid's close pass in 2029.

By roughly how much did NASA's DART impact shorten Dimorphos's orbit around Didymos in 2022?

DART shortened the orbit by about 32 minutes, from 11 hours 55 minutes to 11 hours 23 minutes, far beyond the 73-second success threshold; it hit the moonlet at roughly 14,000 mph on 26 September 2022.

Which NASA space telescope was retired in 2018 after discovering more than 2,600 exoplanets?

Kepler stared at roughly 150,000 stars in one patch of sky from 2009, catching the tiny dips in brightness as planets crossed in front, until its fuel ran out in October 2018.

Until 1974, what distinction did Kennedy Space Center's VAB hold?

Tallest building in Florida: at 526 feet the VAB held that title until Jacksonville's 535-foot Independent Life Building topped it in 1974; its four high-bay doors, 456 feet tall, are the largest in the world.

What is the top loaded speed of the crawler-transporters that carry NASA rockets to the pad?

About 1 mph when loaded (2 mph empty), so the 3.4-mile trip from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Pad 39A takes hours; built for the Saturn V in 1965, the crawlers were later upgraded to carry the SLS.

Which company built the Apollo Lunar Module at its factory in Bethpage, New York?

Grumman built the Lunar Module at Bethpage on Long Island; development ran months late, but the lander never failed in flight and served as a lifeboat for the Apollo 13 crew.

About how much water fills NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory pool used for spacewalk training?

The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory holds 6.2 million gallons: the tank near Johnson Space Center is 202 feet long, 102 feet wide and 40 feet deep, big enough for full-size mockups of space station modules.

What nickname do NASA staff use for the agency's red, stylised 1970s logotype?

The 'worm', designed by Richard Danne and Bruce Blackburn in 1974, replaced the 'meatball' insignia until 1992 and was revived on a Falcon 9 for the 2020 Demo-2 launch.

NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, a rocket launch site, is located in which US state?

Virginia: Wallops sits on the Eastern Shore near Chincoteague and specialises in sounding rockets, scientific balloons and small launch vehicles, including Antares cargo flights to the ISS.

Which NASA research center sits at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley?

Ames Research Center: its neighbour Google leased Moffett airfield from NASA in 2014, and the center houses some of the agency's biggest supercomputers and wind tunnels.

NASA's Glenn Research Center is located in which Ohio city?

Cleveland: the center began in 1941 as an aircraft-engine laboratory, was called the Lewis Research Center from 1958, and was renamed for John Glenn in 1999.

Which Langley mathematician did John Glenn ask to personally recheck his orbital calculations?

Katherine Johnson had already worked out Alan Shepard's trajectory by hand when Glenn insisted she verify the computer's numbers; her story reached a wide audience through the 2016 film Hidden Figures.

NASA's largest rocket engine test facility, Stennis Space Center, is in which state?

Mississippi: Stennis sits in Hancock County near the Louisiana line; Saturn V first and second stages were test-fired there before flight, as was every Space Shuttle main engine.

Which NASA administrator led the agency from 1961 to 1968, through most of Apollo's build-up?

James Webb ran NASA from February 1961 to October 1968, steering it through Apollo's build-up and the Apollo 1 fire; the James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, honours him.

In what year did NASA publicly introduce its first astronaut group, the Mercury Seven?

NASA unveiled the Mercury Seven in Washington on 9 April 1959: Carpenter, Cooper, Glenn, Grissom, Schirra, Shepard and Slayton, all of whom eventually flew in space.

On which 1966 mission did Neil Armstrong and David Scott lose control after docking?

Gemini 8: minutes after the first docking in space, on 16 March 1966, a stuck thruster sent the craft into a violent spin, forcing the first emergency return of a US crew from orbit.

Apollo 12's crew landed within walking distance of which earlier robotic probe?

Surveyor 3 had landed in the Ocean of Storms in April 1967; Conrad and Bean walked to it, cut off its camera and other parts and brought them home for study.

The Mars Climate Orbiter was lost in 1999 because of a mismatch between which two things?

Metric and US customary units: Lockheed Martin's thruster software produced pound-force seconds where NASA's navigators expected newton-seconds, a factor of 4.45 that steered the probe too low on 23 September 1999.

Which two NASA astronauts flew the first crewed SpaceX Crew Dragon mission in 2020?

Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken launched on Demo-2 on 30 May 2020, the first crewed orbital launch from US soil since the shuttle retired, and named their capsule Endeavour.

Who commanded Expedition 1, the first long-duration crew to live aboard the ISS?

Bill Shepherd, a former Navy SEAL with three shuttle flights totalling about 18 days, commanded Expedition 1 from November 2000 to March 2001 alongside Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev.

Scott Kelly's year-long ISS mission used which ground control subject for comparison?

His identical twin Mark Kelly, also a retired astronaut, stayed on Earth during Scott's 340-day flight in 2015–16 so NASA's Twins Study could compare changes in gene expression and telomere length.

Which astronaut took part in the first all-female spacewalk with Jessica Meir in October 2019?

Christina Koch went on to spend 328 days in orbit on that expedition, then the longest single spaceflight by a woman, beating Peggy Whitson's 289-day record.

What did flight director Gene Kranz famously wear in Mission Control, a new one each mission?

Gene Kranz wore a new vest sewn by his wife Marta for each mission; the white one he wore during Apollo 13 was later donated to the Smithsonian.

The 'Pale Blue Dot' photo of Earth was taken in 1990 from roughly how far away?

About 6 billion km (40 AU): Voyager 1 turned its camera back on 14 February 1990 at Carl Sagan's urging, as part of a 'Family Portrait' of the Solar System taken on its way out.

A fan letter campaign got the first Space Shuttle orbiter renamed after which fictional ship?

USS Enterprise: Star Trek fans wrote to the White House and the orbiter originally to be called Constitution was rolled out as Enterprise in September 1976, with the show's cast on hand; it never flew in space.

Who commanded STS-1, the first Space Shuttle flight, in 1981?

John Young, then chief of the Astronaut Office, commanded STS-1 with pilot Robert Crippen; Columbia lifted off on 12 April 1981, exactly 20 years after Yuri Gagarin's Vostok 1 flight.

Which Space Shuttle orbiter was built to replace the one destroyed in 1986?

Endeavour, authorised in 1987 to replace Challenger, was named by schoolchildren in a national contest after the ship that carried Captain Cook on his first voyage, and first flew in May 1992.

Which Apollo astronaut's mother had the maiden name Moon?

Buzz Aldrin's mother was born Marion Moon; Aldrin also took communion privately inside the lunar module shortly after the Apollo 11 landing.

Gus Grissom's Mercury capsule Liberty Bell 7 sank in 1961; in what year was it finally recovered?

1999: Liberty Bell 7 was lifted from the Atlantic floor on 20 July 1999, the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, 38 years after its hatch blew prematurely at splashdown.

Spoken greetings in how many languages are on the Voyager Golden Record?

55 languages, from Akkadian to Wu Chinese, carry spoken greetings; the record, curated by Carl Sagan's team in 1977, also has a greeting from UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim and 90 minutes of music.