#nasa60th

NASA’s 60th Anniversary: How It All Began

Congress passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, on July 16 and President Eisenhower signed it into law on July 29, 1958. We opened for business on Oct. 1, 1958, with T. Keith Glennan as our first administrator. Our history since then tells a story of exploration, innovation and discoveries. The next 60 years, that story continues. Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/60

Stargazing at the Old Minneapolis Public Library

Minneapolis Star, February 3, 1961: "You don't have to be a chimpanzee to visit outer space--you can make the trip Saturday from 4th St. and Nicollet Ave." 

In February 1961, the Planetarium opened in the new Minneapolis Central Library. That year more than 1,200 city and county residents, including many school children, visited the new Science Museum & Planetarium each day. Maxine Haarstick, director of the Museum-Planetarium, was at the helm, flicking switches, sending planets into orbit, projecting sunsets and thousands of stars across the domed sky. "It makes you feel awful powerful," confesses Mrs. Haarstick. "You're standing here in the heart of the lower loop; but you can take people to the equator or anywhere on earth to see the stars visible there." 

While planning the new planetarium, Haarstick, a former teacher, visited every planetarium in the United States, some with domes as large as 70 feet in diameter (the library dome measured 40 feet across). Haarstick left the library in 1979 to work for the Science Museum of Minnesota, the organization that would go on to run the Planetarium. Due to lack of funds, the library science museum exhibits closed in June, 1982. The planetarium continued to operate until 2002 when the old Central Library was demolished to make way for the new Cesar Pelli-designed building. While a planetarium was included in designs for the current building, it was never built. The new Planetarium is now open at the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum.

Shooting the Moon: Photos of the Lunar Surface and Beyond

By Richard Green | Still Pictures Unit

On August 26, 1966 an image graced the front page of the New York Times under the headline, “How the Earth Looks from the Moon.”  The image was of such low quality that the grey sphere which all of mankind calls home was barely recognizable.  Nevertheless, the photograph was remarkable.  For the first time, humans looked beyond the lunar horizon and saw Earth.  The image came from NASA’s Lunar Orbiter project and was dubbed by some as the “Picture of the Century.”  Now, over 50 years later, the photographs have been fully restored thanks to the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP), giving people a new look at an old image.

Between August 1966 and August 1967, NASA launched a series of five Lunar Orbiter Missions in order to find a landing spot for future manned missions to the moon.   The Lunar Orbiter was an unmanned probe that essentially operated as flying photographic laboratory.  The spacecraft was equipped to photograph the moon on 70 mm film, develop the film, and scan the film in small segments. The scans were then converted to a radio signal which was sent back to Earth.

Upon receiving the transmission, NASA technicians back on Earth saved the image data in two separate methods:

In one method, the signal was converted and played through a kinescope machine, a rudimentary means of recording, in which the image was played through a television tube and a motion picture camera pointed at the screen recorded the image on 35 mm film.  The strips of film were then cut and reassembled by hand to form the complete image.

Since the 70 mm film on the spacecraft was a negative, the 35 mm film recording on the ground produced a positive image, not suitable for producing photographic prints. To enable the production of prints, operators then took another photograph of the assembled strips to produce a comprehensive negative image of the lunar surface, from which prints could be made for scientific analysis of landing sites.  This process was successful in determining a landing spot for the Apollo missions, yet ultimately created low resolution photographs with minimal detail.

NASA Celebrating it's 60th Birthday!

From 2018 through 2022, NASA is marking a series of important milestones – the 60th anniversary of the agency’s founding by Congress in 1958, and the 50th anniversary of the Apollo missions that put a dozen Americans on the Moon between July 1969 and December 1972. Celebrations already are under way. Some are complete, some are scheduled in the coming months, and some are still being planned. 

You can read more on their 60th birthday plans here:

Space Explorers: A New Dawn

To mark NASA’s 60th anniversary, October’s Archives Hashtag Party theme is Archives in Space. The US National Archives created the Hashtag Party to give archives an opportunity to share their collections around a fun topic; we’re featuring Space Explorers: A New Dawn to highlight this month’s theme.

This exquisite live-action documentary about the new age of space exploration will be presented in multiple pods of synchronized Voyager chairs in all New Frontier venues. Witness the lives of NASA astronauts as they navigate the trials and sacrifices of their training and missions, discover the camaraderie of space programs around the world, and gain insight into mankind’s most ambitious journey to understand our planet, our universe, and our origins.