From a Cape Canaveral blockhouse the seven Mercury astronauts watched tensely last week as the countdown neared zero. Atop a towering Redstone rocket rested the one-ton Mercury space capsule of ...

Those were the words Alan Shepard used 60 years ago Wednesday to note his cockpit timepiece had begun running. This meant his Redstone rocket booster had left the ground sending him and his one-man ...

Mercury has long baffled astronomers because it defies much of what we know about planet formation. A new space mission ...

The creator of the futuristic Orion capsule, the only spacecraft capable of speeding aeronauts to the Moon, is set to begin ...

IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more. When the Smithsonian received this ...

Although NASA’s Project Mercury and SpaceShipOne served very different objectives, a closer look reveals that both missions were powered by equal parts of competition, innovation, and a strong dose of ...