LOS ANGELES — The space shuttle Endeavour is absolutely breathtaking in its 20-story new home at the California Science Center's brand-new Air & Space Center, which is set to open on Nov. 13, the museum announced on Wednesday (June 24).

After over three decades of ideation, development and construction, the California Science Center has officially announced an opening date for its brand-new Samuel Oschin Air & Space Center, which will feature the space shuttle Endeavour. On Wednesday, I got to peek behind the curtain to see Endeavour's new home inside the center, where it stands in a "ready to launch" position, towering at nearly 200 feet (61 meters) tall — a truly spectacular focal point. The shuttle is even complete with real solid rocket boosters and the last flight-qualified external fuel tank (ET-94).

"It's been a lot of years to get here, and it's a dream come true," Lynda Oschin, the chairman of the board and secretary of the Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Oschin Family Foundation, told Space.com about this massive exhibition finally coming together.

"They're going to be in tears, they're going to be shaking, and they're going to be proud," Oschin added, referring to how she expects guests to react to Endeavour in its new home. And having just seen it for the first time in all its glory, standing upright with its fuel tank and rocket boosters seemingly ready to launch, I can attest: She is absolutely right.

Before you even step foot into the shuttle room, there is a short video that is played that takes you through the history of the shuttle program while bringing to life the fiery excitement of a shuttle launch. In a dramatic cloud of smoke, the shuttle room is revealed and there isn't a single person who isn't in absolute awe. Endeavour is hypnotizing. With the boosters and fuel tank, its already massive stature becomes almost larger than life.

A walkway takes you all the way around the shuttle, which is open on one side so you can clearly peer into its many layers, seeing wires and other details. You can also walk down to a lower floor, where you can stand underneath the shuttle and inspect it from every angle you might want. And surrounding the shuttle itself are a variety of interactive exhibits like a shuttle landing simulator (good luck), the tires from Endeavour's final landing, and more.

"I'm a child of the Apollo era, and I remember having a plastic Apollo Saturn V rocket that I carried with me everywhere, and that was after going to Johnson Space Center, visiting the space center there," retired NASA astronaut John "Danny" Olivas told Space.com. "inspiration happens through exposure, and there's nothing, I think, more impressive than standing next to the space shuttle stacked the way that they've done here at the California Science Center."

And Endeavour is special in this respect: No other museum has a space shuttle orbiter that's mounted vertically, in the launch position.

One aspect of the California Science Center that stands out is its accessibility, as the museum (including the brand-new air and space center) is entirely free to the public — and it's on the metro line, which kids in L.A. can ride for free. Many museums and similar institutions strive for and value accessibility, and this center really takes that to heart, keeping even new installations like the shuttle free to visit. "California Science Center has opened up accessibility for inspiration to the next generation of space explorers," Olivas said.

And while NASA moves forward with its Artemis moon program, Olivas, who flew on two shuttle missions (STS-128 and STS 117), is confident that the lessons and history of the space shuttle program will carry on in inspiring that next generation.

"One of the things that really touches my heart about the space shuttle program is that it ushered in an age of diversity in space exploration that we had not seen prior," Olivas said. "We got an opportunity to see so many firsts — so many firsts of Americans being able to see themselves in the astronauts that flew in space, and that opened the door to so many people like myself, recognizing that wow, yeah, I can become an astronaut."

The new Air & Space Center was first imagined as part of a museum expansion plan all the way back in 1993. Over 30 years later, the futuristic building stands a whopping 20 stories tall to accommodate the towering Endeavour, which immediately grabs the focus of anyone walking into the building.

After NASA's space shuttle program ended in 2011, the agency worked to turn itsretired shuttles into museum attractions. Endeavour first arrived at the California Science Center in October of 2012. Thousands watched as the spacecraft rolled through the streets of Los Angeles on the back of a slow-crawling transporter, a 12-mile (19 kilometers) trek from Los Angeles International Airport to the California Science Center that took the craft 68 hours.

Four years later, in 2016, ET-94, the shuttle's external fuel tank, arrived. And seven years after that, in 2023, two solid rocket boosters arrived and the shuttle was taken off display, where it had sat for over a decade, as preparations began for its new home in the Air & Space Center.

"Now, with the stunning display of Endeavour in launch configuration, the Samuel Oschin Air & Space Center will give us a clear, greater platform than ever before to accomplish our mission to stimulate curiosity and inspire science learning in everyone," said Jeffrey Rudolph, president and CEO of the California Science Center. This "will be the only place in the world to see a complete space shuttle system, with the flown orbiter Endeavour mated to real solid rocket boosters and the only remaining flight-qualified external tank, ET-94."

While Endeavour is the clear centerpiece of the building, the Samuel Oschin Air & Space Center will be chock-full of a wide variety of other space artifacts. The building is split into three sections that guests will be able to explore: air, space and shuttle. Relics from throughout spaceflight history, interactive exhibits, and immersive, educational experiences fill the space. Currently, 1.6 million people visit the California Science Center each year, so even if this number were to remain the same, this building has to be ready for a big and diverse crowd from around the world.

Florida's Space Coast is readying for a big crowd for the Artemis 2 moon launch — but just how big is unclear.

NASA aims to launch Artemis 2 from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) as soon as April 1, the opening day of a window that extends through April 6.

The mission will send four astronauts around the moon: NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen. The quartet will be the first to go to the moon since Apollo 17 landed there in 1972.

Cell-phone data revealed that the uncrewed Artemis 1 launch in 2022 drew between 150,000 and 200,000 people to Florida, the Space Coast Office of Tourism told Space.com. And the first SpaceX Crew Dragon astronaut launch in 2020, which was the first crewed liftoff from KSC since 2011, brought in about 220,000 people.

"Since this is such a historic milestone launch, it's difficult to predict visitation numbers," Meagan Happel, the tourism office's public relations manager, told Space.com. "The last time we launched astronauts to the moon was over 50 years ago, so it's hard to make accurate predictions."

How much money?

The tourism office doesn't have a projection yet for how much money Artemis 2 will inject into the local economy, but in 2023, studies it conducted suggested that people coming in overnight for launches generally spend about $1,050 per party ($350 per person). People coming for the day, by comparison, spend $150 per party ($50 per person).

Milestone missions have historically received many drop-ins. For example, the last liftoff of the space shuttle Discovery in February 2011 generated as many as 500,000 visitors, according to tourism numbers available at the time. (Most space shuttle launches back then drew between 150,000 and 200,000 people each.)

By comparison, SpaceX crewed launches in the 2023 timeframe attracted between 100,000 and 150,000 visitors per opportunity, generating as much as $30 million apiece for the economy.

Can I get a hotel room?

It appears that hotel rooms on the Space Coast are getting hard to come by because of Artemis 2. "I do not have data for every single hotel, but the 14 that have gotten back to me … have all said they're sold out for this launch attempt," Happel said.

An anecdotal glance at Google Maps indicates that some (often pricey) hotel rooms may still be available at the coast between April 1 and April 7, which is the full early-April launch period for Artemis 2, assuming an overnight stay after April 6. But you should verify with individual hotels if you're planning to go.

For better availability and cheaper pricing, go about an hour's drive out, to a place like Orlando. If the launch is in darkness, and you don't want to deal with the traffic, you may get a show from as far as an hour away.

"When Artemis 1 launched at night, it was so bright it looked like a sunrise even from an hour south," Happel said. "Many people have said they heard birds singing their morning songs, as they also thought it was the sunrise."

Driving around on launch day

More tips for those of you making the trip: In the Space Coast area, you need a vehicle to get around. Local launch traffic will likely be heavy, so leaving yourself hours of flexibility is prudent.

First, check for your timing and routing. For now, NASA publishes its most up-to-date daily launch windows on this web page. For launch day, the Florida Department of Transportation will release maps for detours and road closures, which will be available online at the tourism office as well as at Brevard County Emergency Management's Facebook page, among other locations.

Second, prepare for a long commute. "I would recommend preparing like you're going to a major sporting event or concert festival. The closer you get to the time of the event, the heavier traffic will be — and harder it will become finding parking," Happel said.

Patience is also needed after the launch concludes, Happel added. "As everyone leaves at the same time, you may be sitting in traffic for a while. If possible, maybe consider heading to a local restaurant for dinner — or going down to the beach to help pass time — while you wait for traffic to ease up."

Where and how can I watch?

While the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is often a good spot to watch launches, for Artemis 2 it sounds like you'll need to go elsewhere if you aren't booked there already. "Looks like the specialty ticket packages are both sold out," Happel said, referring to the sales website for those packages.

But there are plenty of other spots to go near KSC, if you come early enough. The tourism office has a launch view map to help plan out your day, but Happel urged people to plan on an early arrival and to be prepared to have backup locations. "Enjoy the wait. Plan a picnic, bring snacks, remember sunscreen, know where the restrooms are. Have whatever you'd need for a few hours at the beach or a park," she said.

As for how to dress, early April is not the blast furnace of humidity often seen during the Florida summer. The Space Coast area typically sees daily temperatures in the mid-70s Fahrenheit into the low 80s (that's low 20s to low 30s Celsius) — but nights can be much cooler, Happel warned.

"Prepare the way you would any day in the sun for a few hours: hydrate, find ways to stay cool, wear sunscreen, bring an umbrella just in case," she said. And maybe bring a sweater and hat in case of colder weather after the sun sets.

How can I stay updated on launch activities?

Space.com is running a liveblog and will keep it updated with all the latest news leading up to launch time.

NASA will also post launch updates through its various social media channels; typically, the agency's X account is the fastest real-time update option if you're on the road. The tourism office will also send out updates through its Space Coast Launches App, available both on Apple and Google.

Happel urged everybody to stay flexible, even up to the last moments before launch. "Visitors should be aware that launches can scrub or be delayed at any point before liftoff due to many reasons, and they should stay tuned to NASA's official channels for timely updates," she said.

The space-based projects just keep on launching! Kristen Stewart will be buckling up for a simulated voyage into space for her upcoming Prime Video limited series playing Sally Ride, America’s first woman in orbit and a pivotal figure in the government's Challenger Disaster investigation.

The series was first revealed in 2024, but it's taken nearly two years for Amazon to officially greenlight the project. Created by series showrunner/executive producer Maggie Cohn ("The Staircase," "American Crime Story") and directed by James Hawes ("Slow Horses," "Black Mirror"), "The Challenger" is adapted from Meredith E. Bagby's "The New Guys: The Historic Class of Astronauts That Broke Barriers and Changed the Face of Space Travel."

Stewart is mostly known for her role in "The Twilight Saga" and its sparkly vampires, but her eclectic body of work includes gems like the spooky thriller "Personal Shopper" and the deeply underrated sci-fi flick, "Underwater." Now she'll be zipping up a spacesuit, playing a true American icon and NASA legend.

The 2023 book that this series is based on centered around NASA's barrier-busting 1978 class of astronauts, which included Sally Ride. "'The Challenger' tells the gripping story of one of the most defining moments in space history, both the unprecedented events leading up to the tragedy, and the shocking investigation that followed," states the official Prime Video description.

"As the members of the 1986 Rogers Commission interrogate the complex inner workings of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to find what, or who, was responsible for the Challenger's doomed fate, the show explores Commission member Sally Ride’s (Stewart) personal journey."

On June 18, 1983, Dr. Sally Ride made history as a flight engineer aboard the space shuttle Challenger during the STS-7 mission that deployed a pair of satellites. Her second flight occurred on Oct. 5, 1984, on the STS-41G, where she and the crew conducted Earth observations for eight days. Ride sadly passed away July 23, 2012, at the age of 61, following a battle with a terminal illness.

"Sally Ride's courage and brilliance changed history, and we couldn’t imagine a more powerful actor to bring her story to life than Kristen Stewart," said Peter Friedlander, head of global television for Amazon MGM Studios.

And it just wouldn’t be a 21st-century entertainment project without an entire platoon of additional executive producers.

"The Challenger's" creative roll call also includes Kyra Sedgwick and Valerie Stadler for Big Swing Productions, Kristen Stewart, Dylan Meyer, and Maggie McLean under their Nevermind shingle, and Amblin Television’s Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey.

There's no projected release date for this one yet, but we'll keep you posted.

NASA's Artemis 2 moon mission will put its astronauts in danger — but just how much danger is tough to say.

The agency announced on Thursday (March 12) that it's targeting April 1 for the launch of Artemis 2, which will send four astronauts on a 10-day journey around the moon and back to Earth.

All crewed space missions are risky. But Artemis 2 will be just the second flight of the Artemis program and the first to carry astronauts, so there's not enough data to properly quantify the risks involved, NASA officials said.

"I wouldn't actually put a number on it," Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said during a briefing on Thursday (March 12) following completion of the Artemis 2 flight readiness review.

Reporters repeatedly pressed Glaze and John Honeycutt, chair of the Artemis 2 mission management team, for numbers during that briefing. And a few did come up.

For example, Honeycutt noted that new rockets have historically launched successfully on their debut flights about 50% of the time. So that may have been the expectation for Artemis 1, the first flight of the Artemis program's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. (Artemis 1 was a success, sending an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back in late 2022.)

Human spaceflight programs that are launching regularly could probably expect a failure rate of about 2% — 1 in 50 — on their second or third liftoffs, Honeycutt added. But Artemis' cadence isn't exactly regular, given that there will be about a 3.5-year gap between the first and second missions if Artemis 2 does indeed get off the pad in early April.

"That basically means we're probably not 1 in 50 on the mission going exactly like we want to, but we're probably not 1 in 2 like we were on the first flight," Honeycutt said.

"That's what I would tell you," he added. "I think we're being really careful not to really lay probabilistic numbers on the table for this mission, just given the small amount of data."

The range Honeycutt cited is consistent with numbers released recently by the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG), in a report about NASA's handling of its Artemis Human Landing System Contracts — awards given to SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop and operate crewed moon landers for the program.

In the report, which was posted online Tuesday (March 12), the OIG estimated that there's a 1-in-30 risk of failure overall during a crewed Artemis mission to the lunar surface, and a 1-in-40 risk during the moon operations phase.

The OIG report also puts this risk threshold into context, comparing it to that of other NASA human spaceflight programs. For example, the relevant number is 1 in 200 for a 210-day commercial crew mission to the International Space Station — that is, one flown by SpaceX with its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule. (Boeing also holds a NASA commercial crew contract but has yet to fly an operational astronaut flight to the orbiting lab.)

The risk of crew loss during the Apollo moon missions was a rather frightening 1 in 10, according to the OIG report. And the managers of NASA's space shuttle program, which flew from 1981 to 2011, "thought they were operating at a 1 in 100 loss of crew threshold, but years later determined the actual number was 1 in 10 for the early flights," the OIG report reads.

Honeycutt's reluctance to put a hard number on the Artemis 2 risk therefore makes a lot of sense. As that example from the space shuttle days shows, estimates made using scant data are likely to be imprecise and in need of future revision.

There are other complications as well, which are related to the relatively small sample sizes and diversity of dangers involved in human spaceflight.

"We have pursued loss of mission, loss of crew-type number assessments, but I'm not sure we understand what they mean," Honeycutt said.

As an example, he explained that the agency's modeling work identifies micrometeors and orbital debris (MMOD) as the biggest single risk to the human spaceflight enterprise.

"It's real, right? But when have the last two bad events occurred? Going uphill, in that highly energetic event," Honeycutt said, presumably referring to the space shuttle Challenger and Columbia accidents in 1986 and 2003, respectively, which killed a total of 14 astronauts. (Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, and Columbia broke apart during reentry due to damage the orbiter sustained during launch.)

"So, you know, we can fool ourselves sometimes into thinking, 'Really? Is that the biggest risk to the mission — MMOD?'" he said.

Honeycutt seemed to realize that such admissions, valid and honest as they are, would probably spawn stories like the one you're reading now. "Well, this oughta make for some good reading over the next few days," he said with a smile, drawing laughter from the journalists in the room.

Editor's note: This story contains discussion of astronaut fatalities and dangerous moments in human spaceflight.

It was 40 years ago today (Jan. 28) that the space shuttle Challenger blasted off on its 10th mission to space. Sadly, the vehicle never made it there.

Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff while carrying seven people, including "Teacher in Space" participant Christa McAuliffe. Nobody survived the launch on Jan. 28, 1986 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, and the event left a permanent mark upon the agency, its contractors and the nation.

Ron Doel, who is today a professor of history at Florida State University, was at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California that day. He was watching the Challenger launch on TV while awaiting JPL's daily news briefing about Voyager 2, a NASA spacecraft that had just flown by Uranus.

"The shock was visceral, immediate," Doel told Space.com by email. Perhaps it was all the more so for him, as an unusual set of circumstances lined up to bring Doel there: he was then a Ph.D. candidate in the history of science program at Princeton University, on a quick visit to learn more about Voyager. Doel had press credentials at JPL through some connections secured through an earlier book contract, allowing him to watch the reporters there react in real time.

"Monitors in the press room that had been showing in real time images transmitted from Voyager now showed, over and over, the launch and explosion," he said. "Some in the press raced out of JPL with new assignments. The Voyager briefing was canceled. NASA officials, as I recall, gave us a briefing on the accident later in the day."

The aftermath

An independent board, often called the Rogers Commission after its chair William P. Rogers, investigated the Challenger accident and found that it was caused by a combination of factors. The 260-page report cannot be summarized in a few words, but one of the more famous lines is this: "The decision to launch the Challenger was flawed." Not only were there technical problems (most famously, an "O-ring" seal failing due to unusually cold conditions), but decision-makers made several assumptions that turned out to be unwarranted.

Sadly, Challenger didn't remain the lone space shuttle tragedy. Seventeen years later came the breakup of the space shuttle Columbia during reentry on Feb. 1, 2003, killing another seven astronauts. That sparked a new query called the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. That Board produced a two-volume report, which also found that a set of technical and human failures led to the astronauts' deaths.

"Columbia I remember in a lot of detail, because at the time I was a volunteer at the Boston Museum of Science," recalled Pauline Barmby, today a department chair of physics and astronomy at Canada's Western University, whose faculty include astronaut trainers and space instrument/experiment designers. Barmby also served as a team member on one of the instruments for NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

"They [the museum] were planning on doing a live coverage of the landing," Barmby told Space.com. But television stations instead only had live shots from Texas showing the shuttle's debris trails as it broke up. "I recall vividly the person who was to be the presenter just broke down."

Other fatalities in spaceflight include the Apollo 1 launch-pad fire on Jan. 27, 1967, which killed three astronauts; the crash-landing of the Soviet Union's Soyuz 1 spacecraft that killed its single cosmonaut on April 24, 1967; and Soyuz 11, whose three cosmonauts died during reentry (due to depressurization) on June 29, 1971. (This list is not comprehensive; it doesn't include all training fatalities, for example.)

There have also been numerous close calls over the years, including in recent memory. For example: European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano experienced a water leak in the helmet of his NASA spacesuit while spacewalking outside the International Space Station (ISS) in 2013. And suspected debris strikes damaged crewed spacecraft docked to both the ISS and China's Tiangong space station, forcing vehicle swaps for astronauts originally scheduled to come home on Russia's Soyuz-MS 22 spacecraft and China's Shenzhou 20 capsule. Everything worked out in both cases; the spaceflyers landed safely in September 2023 and November 2025, respectively.

As the above examples show, human spaceflight is risky. Each incident is investigated and reported on by the responsible entity, with the idea to prevent similar issues from arising in the future. But sometimes, the unexpected happens. Professional astronauts at any agency would likely tell you that they are prepared, both in training and in mindset, to be ready for the worst. But with more missions launching to space than ever these days, including with private citizens, what lessons can we think about to keep flying?

Lessons learned

In the not-too-distant past, a rocket might launch to orbit every few weeks or so. But these days, we see launches every few days — and often even more frequently than that. There is a safety challenge here, and it increases with launch cadence: Issues are often identified with the aid of hindsight, and the public doesn't necessarily have insight into how decisions were made until they are probed by after-the-fact investigatory boards.

But NASA embraces a complex set of factors on every critical spaceflight decision, especially those regarding crewed missions. For example, the agency looks at past incidents to see "lessons learned," which can help prevent issues in the future. NASA also examines spaceflight hardware, listens to experts and brings in outside voices on some decisions, just to name a few considerations.

Agency officials emphasized in a Jan. 16 press conference that everyone is very careful in green-lighting the launch of crewed missions, such as the forthcoming Artemis 2, which will send four astronauts around the moon as soon as Feb. 6.

We got some insights into that safety-first mindset during that briefing. A reporter asked why NASA was going ahead with simultaneous launch preparations for Artemis 2 and SpaceX's Crew-12 astronaut mission to the ISS, which is currently targeted for Feb. 15.

"This is not a rush," replied Jeff Radigan, NASA's lead flight director for Artemis 2.

"It's not prudent for us to put both those [missions] up at the same time, but we also have to ensure that both of them are ready to go," he added. "We may run into an issue, and the last thing we want to do is make a decision too early and then lose an opportunity."

Florida State University's Doel noted that making the right call all the time is both "hard, and dangerous" but also said that "people can fix problems in tech systems over time." That said, he added, "'lessons learned' is difficult, isn't it, since the systems themselves are not static but continually evolving. We're not using Apollo technology anymore; lessons won't necessarily apply."

Faster, better, cheaper?

Satellites are smaller and cheaper to launch than they used to be, and more industries than ever depend on space for military monitoring, Earth observation and telecommunications, among other applications. A huge roster of private companies — famously led by SpaceX — have cashed in on the demand.

While the experts Space.com talked to were careful not to lay blame or praise on any particular space entity for its safety practices, they said in general that there's pressure on the system that should be acknowledged by anyone in space engineering.

"The joke about space missions is, they don't get launched until there's a pile of paperwork that's as high as the rocket," Western University's Barmby said. "There's an enormous amount of testing, and you make one minor change and you test to make sure that everything works the same way it did before, and then you make one more change. There's an enormous amount of testing and documentation that happens before launch. But there is also a recognition that there's some things that you cannot test, and you will only see what happens once you're actually in space."

Doel, as professors often do, also recommended further reading about systems under pressure — for example, anything by Thomas Hughes on technological systems; Barbara Keys' work on the role emotions play in decisions, such as "Personal and Political Emotions in the Mind of the Diplomat" (2019); Edward Tenner's "Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences" (1997); and Diane Vaughn's "The Challenger Launch Decision" (1996).

With more spaceflight activity happening generally, private companies are taking on more and more responsibility for missions as well. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing and Virgin Galactic have all launched humans to space recently. A few of their missions have had issues, however.

For example, Blue Origin has suffered a partial failure and a full failure of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle, both times during uncrewed flights. Virgin Galactic had a pilot fatality during a test flight in October 2014. And even SpaceX, which is famously prolific and technically adept in launching people and satellites safely, has had a few hiccups — a tiny handful of Falcon 9 rocket launches or landings have failed over the past decade, requiring investigations that briefly grounded the fleet.

None of the Falcon 9 issues unduly affected crewed missions or kept Elon Musk's company on the ground for long. But some critics say there's a vulnerability in having as much riding on one company's rockets as the U.S. government does with SpaceX.

In 2024, Boeing's Starliner spacecraft launched on its first-ever crewed flight, a test mission that sent two NASA astronauts to the ISS. But a number of issues cropped up en route, ultimately leading NASA to bring Starliner home uncrewed. The two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, came back to Earth on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule about nine months after their originally expected return date. Starliner also experienced issues on its two previous flights, which were uncrewed test missions to the ISS.

The experts interviewed for this article were careful to stress that they are outsiders to the decision-making processes for human spaceflight. But Barmby said she likes a bit of wisdom offered up by a high-profile insider — retired Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield, whose words she paraphrased. "Your first job is to not make things worse," she said. "In many of these … the situation was not, 'We've got to decide in the next 10 minutes.' It's, 'We've got to decide in the next couple of days.' So I think the lesson there is, yes, it's serious, but we don't immediately panic."

Doel said that history is somewhat helpful in preventing future problems, but no analogy is perfect. "History often doesn't repeat, exactly, but it often rhymes," he said.

For example, early in the space shuttle's 30-year history, launches often took place every few weeks. This was in large part because, as the nonprofit Planetary Society points out, "the U.S. adhered to a shuttle-only launch policy for all space missions." While the shuttle was an incredible vehicle, early hopes that it would serve as a rapid-reuse "space truck" were quickly dashed, especially by the Challenger and Columbia accidents.

"The shuttle's legacy is complex: It never lived up to its promise of enabling fast, affordable space travel," the Planetary Society wrote. "Nevertheless, the shuttles made impressive scientific, technological and cultural achievements. The most well-traveled shuttle, Discovery, flew 39 times — a record that will stand for years to come."

NASA's Artemis 2 mission won't just send a quartet of astronauts around the moon — a trove of aerospace artifacts will make the trip as well.

A piece of the Wright Brothers' plane will fly on Artemis 2's Orion spacecraft, for example, as will an American flag that reached orbit on the first and final space shuttle missions, NASA announced on Jan. 21.

"Historical artifacts flying aboard Artemis 2 reflect the long arc of American exploration and the generations of innovators who made this moment possible," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement. "This mission will bring together pieces of our earliest achievements in aviation, defining moments from human spaceflight and symbols of where we're headed next."

Artemis 2's Orion will launch atop a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, sending NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen, on a 10-day trip around the moon and back to Earth aboard Orion.

NASA is targeting early February for the launch, which will be the first to send people to lunar realms since Apollo 17 back in 1972.

The mementoes placed on Orion will commemorate the historic nature of the mission, which takes place during the year of the United States' 250th anniversary.

The Wright Brothers made the first-ever successful powered flight back in 1903, getting their Wright Flyer (also known as Flyer 1) aloft over the dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Artemis 2 will carry a small piece of the plane, a 1-square-inch (6.5 square centimeters) swatch of muslin fabric that's on loan from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

A smaller piece of this same swatch has already reached space, getting there on the STS-51D mission of the space shuttle Discovery back in 1985, according to NASA officials.

Artemis 2 won't be the first trip to deep space for a piece of the Wright Flyer, by the way: A different swatch of the pioneering plane flew to Mars aboard NASA's Ingenuity helicopter, which became the first aircraft ever to ply the skies of a world beyond Earth. (The artifact, like Ingenuity, remains on Mars today.)

Also flying on Artemis 2 is an 8-by-13-inch (20 by 33 centimeters) American flag that went up on STS-1 and STS-135 — the first and last space shuttle missions, in 1981 and 2011, respectively — and 2020's Demo-2, the first astronaut mission that SpaceX ever conducted.

The coming moon mission will carry another flag, too.

"A flag that was set to fly on NASA's Apollo 18 mission is included in the flight kit and will make its premiere flight with Orion," NASA officials wrote in the same statement. "The flag serves as a powerful emblem of America's renewed commitment to human exploration of the moon, while honoring the legacy of the Apollo pioneers who first blazed the trail."

Apollo 18 was cancelled in 1970, as were Apollo 19 and Apollo 20, due to budget cuts and shifting national priorities after the U.S. won the Cold War-era space race to the moon. As a result, Apollo 17 became the final mission of the Apollo program.

In total, Orion will carry about 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) of mementoes and artifacts on Artemis 2, according to NASA. Here's a brief rundown of the other historical payloads:

• Negative of a photo taken in 1964 by Ranger 7, the first NASA mission to beam up-close imagery of the moon back to Earth. The Ranger missions were designed to help NASA select safe landing sites for the Apollo missions. Therefore, "the photo represents a major turning point in the race to the moon that will be echoed today through the success of Artemis," NASA officials wrote in the statement.
• Soil samples dug from the base of "moon trees," which grew from seeds that flew to lunar orbit and back in late 2022 on NASA's uncrewed Artemis 1 mission. Such trees have sprouted at 236 different places around the U.S., but the soil flying on Artemis 2 comes from moon trees growing on the campuses of NASA's 10 research centers.
• An SD card carrying the names of millions of people who participated in NASA's "Send Your Name to Space" campaign for Artemis 2.
• Stickers and patches provided by the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency (ESA), which are partners on the mission. ESA, for example, provided Orion's service module.

One of NASA's most decorated astronauts has called it a career.

Suni Williams retired from the agency on Dec. 27, 2025 after 27 years of service. During her NASA career, she spent 608 total days off Earth — the second-most in American history, behind Peggy Whitson's 695 — and ran the first-ever marathon in space.

"Suni Williams has been a trailblazer in human spaceflight, shaping the future of exploration through her leadership aboard the space station and paving the way for commercial missions to low Earth orbit," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement on Tuesday (Jan. 20) that announced Williams' retirement.

"Her work advancing science and technology has laid the foundation for Artemis missions to the moon and advancing toward Mars, and her extraordinary achievements will continue to inspire generations to dream big and push the boundaries of what's possible," Isaacman added. "Congratulations on your well-deserved retirement, and thank you for your service to NASA and our nation."

Williams joined NASA in 1998, part of an astronaut class dubbed "The Penguins." She flew to space for the first time in December 2006, living aboard the International Space Station (ISS) until late April of 2007.

In the home stretch of that mission, she competed in the Boston Marathon from orbit, running on a treadmill as her crewmates cheered her on. Williams finished the 26.2-mile run in four hours and 24 minutes.

She flew two more long-duration missions to the ISS, launching to the station in July 2012 and then again in June 2024. That latter flight was the first crewed mission of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, which did not go according to plan.

Williams and fellow NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore were supposed to spend just 10 days or so in space. But Starliner experienced thruster problems on the way to the ISS, and NASA decided to extend the duo's mission while it worked out how to handle the situation.

The agency eventually decided to bring Starliner down uncrewed, which happened without incident in September 2024. Williams and Wilmore stayed aboard the ISS until March 2025, when they returned to Earth on the downward leg of SpaceX's Crew-9 astronaut mission.

Williams and Wilmore (who retired in August 2025) spent 286 days in space on that mission, which puts them in a tie for sixth place for longest single spaceflight by an American. (Frank Rubio holds that record, at 371 days.)

During her NASA career, Williams conducted nine spacewalks, which lasted a total of 62 hours and 6 minutes. That's a record for most spacewalking time by a woman, and it's the fourth-most overall.

Williams, 60, is from Needham, Massachusetts. She earned a bachelor's degree in physical science from the U.S. Naval Academy and a master's degree in engineering management from the Florida Institute of Technology. She's also a retired U.S. Navy captain and pilot who has logged more than 4,000 flight hours in 40 different aircraft.

But she was probably always destined to become an astronaut.

"Anyone who knows me knows that space is my absolute favorite place to be. It's been an incredible honor to have served in the Astronaut Office and have had the opportunity to fly in space three times," Williams said in the same statement.

"I had an amazing 27-year career at NASA, and that is mainly because of all the wonderful love and support I've received from my colleagues," she added. "The International Space Station, the people, the engineering, and the science are truly awe-inspiring and have made the next steps of exploration to the moon and Mars possible. I hope the foundation we set has made these bold steps a little easier. I am super excited for NASA and its partner agencies as we take these next steps, and I can't wait to watch the agency make history."

Mark Kelly isn't taking his punishment lying down.

Kelly — a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot and NASA astronaut who currently serves as a U.S. Senator (D-Ariz.) — announced today (Jan. 12) that he's suing the Pentagon and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over their plan to censure him for statements he made in a video late last year.

"Pete Hegseth is coming after what I earned through my twenty-five years of military service, in violation of my rights as an American, as a retired veteran, and as a United States Senator whose job is to hold him— and this or any administration — accountable," Kelly said in an X post today. "His unconstitutional crusade against me sends a chilling message to every retired member of the military: if you speak out and say something that the President or Secretary of Defense doesn’t like, you will be censured, threatened with demotion, or even prosecuted."

Mark Kelly is a former captain in the U.S. Navy who flew 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm. In late November, he and five other Congressmen with military or intelligence backgrounds put together a 90-second video reminding U.S. servicemembers not to obey illegal orders.

President Donald Trump quickly condemned the video as seditious, and the Pentagon announced that it was investigating Kelly for potential misconduct.

Last week, Hegseth reported that the Department of Defense is taking "administrative action" against the former space shuttle astronaut.

"The department has initiated retirement grade determination proceedings under 10 U.S.C. § 1370(f), with reduction in his retired grade resulting in a corresponding reduction in retired pay," Hegseth wrote via X on Jan. 5. "To ensure this action, the Secretary of War has also issued a formal Letter of Censure, which outlines the totality of Captain (for now) Kelly's reckless misconduct. This Censure is a necessary process step, and will be placed in Captain Kelly's official and permanent military personnel file."

(In September, President Trump issued an executive order rebranding the Department of Defense as the Department of War, but the former remains its official name.)

Kelly has defended himself against such accusations and actions at every step, and his newly filed lawsuit takes the fight to a new level.

"Every servicemember knows military rank is earned, not given. It's earned through the risks you take, the sacrifices you and your family make, the leadership you display, and the respect you earn from the superiors who recommend you for promotion," Kelly wrote in today's X post.

"Now, Pete Hegseth wants our longest-serving military veterans to live with the constant threat that they could be deprived of their rank and pay years or even decades after they leave the military just because he or another Secretary of Defense doesn't like what they've said. That's not the way things work in the United States of America, and I won't stand for it," he added.

The lawsuit, which was filed today in Washington, D.C., argues that the censure letter, retirement grade determination process and related actions are "unlawful and unconstitutional" for a variety of reasons.

"The First Amendment forbids the government and its officials from punishing disfavored expression or retaliating against protected speech. That prohibition applies with particular force to legislators speaking on matters of public policy," it reads. "The Secretary's letter makes clear on its face that he is disciplining Senator Kelly solely for the content and viewpoint of his political speech."

The Trump administration is following through on its threats against former NASA astronaut and current U.S. Senator Mark Kelly.

In late November, Kelly (D-Ariz.) and five other Congressmen who have served in the military participated in a 90-second video reminding U.S. servicemembers not to obey illegal orders. President Donald Trump deemed the video seditious, saying that such behavior is "punishable by DEATH!"

Mark Kelly's life does not seem to be in danger, but his rank and pension may be. On Monday (Jan. 6), Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that his organization "is taking administrative action" against Kelly, a former Navy fighter pilot who has four space shuttle missions under his belt.

"The department has initiated retirement grade determination proceedings under 10 U.S.C. § 1370(f), with reduction in his retired grade resulting in a corresponding reduction in retired pay," Hegseth wrote via X on Monday.

"To ensure this action, the Secretary of War has also issued a formal Letter of Censure, which outlines the totality of Captain (for now) Kelly's reckless misconduct. This Censure is a necessary process step, and will be placed in Captain Kelly's official and permanent military personnel file."

(Hegseth and other military leaders use the terms "Department of War" and "Secretary of War" in accordance with an executive order that Trump issued in September. But "Department of Defense" and "Secretary of Defense" remain the official names.)

Kelly has been notified of the action and has 30 days to submit a response, according to Hegseth. The "retirement grade determination process" will be complete within 45 days, the secretary added.

Kelly defended himself vigorously shortly after the video's release, saying that he would not be bullied by Trump, Hegseth or other administration officials. He reiterated that stance on Monday in the wake of Hegseth's statement.

"Over twenty-five years in the U.S. Navy, thirty-nine combat missions, and four missions to space, I risked my life for this country and to defend our Constitution — including the First Amendment rights of every American to speak out. I never expected that the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense would attack me for doing exactly that," Kelly, who's the twin brother of fellow former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, said via X on Monday.

"If Pete Hegseth, the most unqualified Secretary of Defense in our country's history, thinks he can intimidate me with a censure or threats to demote me or prosecute me, he still doesn't get it. I will fight this with everything I've got — not for myself, but to send a message back that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don’t get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government," he added.

Houston, we may have a problem ... for your senators' plans to bring a NASA space shuttle to Texas.

NASA's new chief Jared Isaacman said a controversial proposal to move the space shuttle Discovery to Texas from its current home on display at a Smithsonian Air and Space Museum hangar in Virginia, may end with a different spacecraft entirely landing in Houston.

"My predecessor has already selected a vehicle," Isaacman said of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who led NASA as acting chief until this month, in a CNBC interview on Dec. 27. "My job now is to make sure that we can undertake such a transportation within the budget dollars that we have available and, of course most importantly, ensuring the safety of the vehicle." Isaacman officially took charge at NASA on Dec. 18, a day after being confirmed by the Senate.

The plan to move space shuttle Discovery, NASA's most-flown orbiter, to Houston was originally laid out by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). The Texas senators included a provision for the move in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law over the summer.

Cruz and Cornyn have said that Houston, home to NASA's Johnson Space Center where astronauts train and Mission Control is located, should have its own iconic human spaceflight vehicle on display. Discovery flew 39 space missions between 1984 and 2011, when NASA shuttered the shuttle program.

NASA's other retired shuttles - Atlantis, Endeavour and Enterprise test vehicle, which never reached space - are on display at museums in Florida, California and New York City, respectively. Two other shuttles, Challenger and Columbia, were lost in tragic space accidents in 1986 and 2003, respectively.

But there's a catch to moving Discovery. (Several of them, actually.) NASA gave the shuttle to the Smithsonian outright in 2012, so moving it to Houston would require the government to claw back the orbiter.

And there's the cost. The One Big Beautiful Bill set aside $85 million to cover the cost of Discovery's move, but critics have said that budget pales in comparison to the actual funds needed to move the 100-ton spacecraft safely, as well as construct a building for its final display. Officials with the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, where Discovery is currently on display, estimate it would cost up to $150 million alone just for the move.

Finally, there's the question of how to physically move the space shuttle.

Discovery is 122 feet (37.2 meters) long and has a wingspan of 78 feet (23.8 m). NASA originally flew the shuttle to the Udvar-Hazy center atop a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (a modified Boeing 747 jumbo jet), then used a series of cranes to hoist the orbiter to the ground. The agency's two Shuttle Carrier Aircraft have since been retired, one of which is on display at Space Center Houston with a mock shuttle atop it.

Smithsonian officials have said Discovery may have to be partially dissassembled to move it to Houston, risking substantial damage to the spacecraft.

With all that as background, Isaacman told CNBC that assuring the safety of Discovery and weighing the costs of a move to Houston will factor into deciding whether NASA will actually push for the shuttle's relocation.

"And if we can't do that, you know what? We've got spacecraft that are going around the moon with Artemis 2, 3, 4 and 5," Isaacman told CNBC.

NASA is currently preparing to launch four Artemis 2 astronauts around the moon as early as February 2026. The space agency hopes to launch its Artemis 3 moon landing mission by 2028. Both missions and their follow ups on Artemis 4 and Artemis 5 would send astronauts to the moon using an Orion spacecraft, which will launch on a giant Space Launch System rocket.

"One way or another, we're going to make sure the Johnson Space Center gets their historic spacecraft right where it belongs," Isaacman said.

In a hangar outside Zurich, a veteran of low Earth orbit lay under a kind of medical scanner no spacecraft was ever designed for. The patient was the European Retrievable Carrier mission, or EURECA, a 16.-4-foot-long (5 meters) European satellite that flew on the space shuttle Atlantis in early 1992 and, unusually for a satellite, actually came home. Instead of engineers with wrenches, its exam team of researchers aimed something far more penetrating than a flashlight at its aluminum skin.

What is it?

Using a high-energy X-ray system, they turned the satellite effectively transparent, revealing fuel and gas tanks, hidden residues of cleaning solutions, and the modular skeleton that once held 15 scientific instruments steady in orbit. It’s the kind of "full-body scan" that, until now, has mostly been reserved for people, not hardware that's been to space and back.

X-rays are already the quiet workhorses of modern life, from hospital radiology to airport security scanners and industrial non-destructive testing. They are invaluable when you need to see inside something without destroying it. In engineering, this often means looking for cracks or voids in aircraft components, checking welds, or inspecting complex assemblies. The recent test with EURECA, published in the October issue of the journal Acta Astronautica takes that same principle and scales it up to an entire flown satellite. It shows not only that such a scan is possible, but that it can reveal details that matter for the future of reusable space hardware.

Where is it?

This image was taken in the laboratory of the Empa Center for X-ray Analytics in Dübendorf, Germany.

Why is it amazing?

This X-ray study exposed what time and stress have done to the spacecraft. The researchers found cracks in some of EURECA's composite struts, as well as fractures and deformations in several scientific instruments that remained on board. Some of that damage could have occurred during the violent minutes of launch, as the satellite endured vibrations and acceleration. Other defects may have built up slowly during months in orbit, where EURECA was exposed to strong radiation, large temperature swings between sunlight and shadow, and tiny impacts from micrometeoroids and debris. Reentry and landing add yet another phase of stress. X-rays alone cannot say exactly when each crack formed, but they show clearly where the structure is most vulnerable.

The timing of this research is key, as the number of active satellites in Earth orbit has now exceeded 10,000, with thousands more being launched each year. On top of that, there are decades' worth of spent rocket stages, dead satellites, and fragments from collisions and explosions. This cloud of space debris poses risks to functioning satellites and to crewed missions. One proposed part of the solution is greater reusability, spacecraft and upper stages that can survive, return, and fly again, rather than becoming junk after a single use.

Want to learn more?

You can learn more about space junk and satellites orbiting Earth.

The controversial plan to move the space shuttle Discovery to Houston reportedly has a powerful new backer.

Jared Isaacman, President Donald Trump's pick to lead NASA, has pledged his support for Discovery's relocation, according to U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

Cornyn, who spearheaded the Discovery plan along with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), made the announcement in an emailed statement on Monday afternoon (Dec. 1).

According to that statement, Cornyn met on Monday with Isaacman, the billionaire founder of the payment-processing company Shift4 and a private astronaut who has funded and commanded two missions to Earth orbit with Elon Musk's SpaceX.

During the meeting, the pair "discussed NASA’s role in maintaining America’s competitive edge over China and other foreign adversaries in space exploration by returning man to the moon to acquire critical minerals and resources vital to national security and continuing to bolster NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, as the human spaceflight center of excellence and innovation," the statement reads.

And, it adds, "Mr. Isaacman committed to follow Sen. Cornyn’s provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, now law, to move the space shuttle Discovery in one piece from Virginia to its rightful home in Space City."

Discovery was the busiest vehicle in NASA's space shuttle program, flying a total of 39 missions from 1984 to 2011. That latter year was when the shuttle program retired, as NASA began working to outsource its crewed orbital missions to private industry.

The four surviving space shuttles were given to museums across the country, to preserve the United States' spaceflight heritage and help inspire young people to embark on careers in space science and exploration.

Enterprise, a test vehicle that never reached orbit, went to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City. Atlantis went on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, Endeavour headed to the California Science Center in Los Angeles, and Discovery ended up at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. (Two other space shuttles, Challenger and Columbia, were lost during tragic failed missions that killed a total of 14 astronauts.)

JSC in Houston, the seat of NASA's crewed spaceflight program, applied for an orbiter but lost out. Cornyn and Cruz view this as unacceptable, so in April they introduced the "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act," which directed NASA to move Discovery from the Smithsonian to Space City.

That bill didn't make it out of committee, but the two senators got it included as a provision in the 1,000-page "One Big Beautiful Bill," which President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4. (The language of the provision is vague to abide by the rules of such "reconciliation" bills, but it clearly refers to Discovery and JSC.)

The bill also allocates $85 million to pay for the move and build the shuttle's new display facility.

The plan has generated a fair amount of debate and controversy. For example, the Smithsonian has argued that it now owns Discovery, so the U.S. government cannot just come and take it.

Smithsonian officials have also contended that moving Discovery — which is 122 feet (37.2 meters) long, with a wingspan of 78 feet (23.8 m) — might require at least a partial disassembly of the orbiter, which would damage its value as a historical artifact. (This concern probably explains why Cornyn's statement on Monday specifies that Discovery will be moved "in one piece.") The museum also estimated that transporting Discovery would cost more than the bill provides — about $120 million to $150 million.

Isaacman could soon be in a position to help grease the wheels on Discovery's proposed move. The U.S. Senate's Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will hold a nomination hearing for him on Wednesday (Dec. 3).

It won't be the first such hearing for Isaacman; Trump first nominated him for the top NASA job in January, then abruptly withdrew his name on May 31, a week or so before he was expected to be confirmed. Trump renominated Isaacman in early November.

The Trump administration has former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly in its crosshairs.

Mark Kelly, who has represented Arizona in the U.S. Senate since 2020, is one of six Democratic lawmakers who participated in a 90-second video reminding members of the military and intelligence communities not to obey illegal orders.

That video drew the ire of President Donald Trump, who deemed it traitorous.

"SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!" Trump said in a Nov. 20 post on Truth Social, the social media site he owns. (Capitalization his.)

"THE TRAITORS THAT TOLD THE MILITARY TO DISOBEY MY ORDERS SHOULD BE IN JAIL RIGHT NOW, NOT ROAMING THE FAKE NEWS NETWORKS TRYING TO EXPLAIN THAT WHAT THEY SAID WAS OK. IT WASN'T, AND NEVER WILL BE! IT WAS SEDITION AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL, AND SEDITION IS A MAJOR CRIME. THERE CAN BE NO OTHER INTERPRETATION OF WHAT THEY SAID!" he added in a Nov. 22 post.

This may not be an idle threat. On Monday (Nov. 24), the Pentagon announced that it's investigating Kelly, a former fighter pilot and captain in the U.S. Navy who flew 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm.

"The Department of War has received serious allegations of misconduct against Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.)," Pentagon officials said Monday via X, the social media site owned by billionaire SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. (In September, Trump issued an executive order directing military leaders to use the term "Department of War," but "Department of Defense" remains the organization's legal name.)

"In accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. § 688, and other applicable regulations, a thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures," the Monday X post continues. "This matter will be handled in compliance with military law, ensuring due process and impartiality. Further official comments will be limited, to preserve the integrity of the proceedings."

Kelly, meanwhile, defended himself on social media, referencing his military and astronaut experience:

Defenders of Kelly and the other five people who spoke in the video — Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado, Chris DeLuzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire and Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan — argue that they're simply urging adherence to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That code, after all, states that military personnel are duty-bound to disobey illegal orders.

"Sedition is trying to overthrow the government with force or violence," Eric Carpenter, a professor at Florida International University College of Law, told FactCheck.org. "In the video, the elected officials are just telling service members to follow the law. They are not telling service members to overthrow the government."

Kelly — who flew on four space shuttle missions between 2001 and 2011 and is the twin brother of former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly — is not backing down.

"If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won't work," he said via X on Monday. "I've given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution."

A new front has opened in the battle over space shuttle Discovery, and the fight has made its way to the Justice Department.

The two Texas Senators trying to mandate the relocation of Discovery from the Smithsonian Institution's Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to Texas, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and joined by Texas Representative Randy Weber, are urging the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate the Smithsonian for violations of the Anti Lobbying Act.

In a letter sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate on Oct. 22, the lawmakers allege the Smithsonian has improperly used federal funds to oppose President Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," (OBBBA) which orders the transfer of Discovery to Houston, the home of NASA's Johnson Space Center. They accuse the Smithsonian of lobbying Senate and House committee staff, coordinating with journalists to generate coverage in favor of keeping the shuttle within the Smithsonian's collection and circulating inflated estimates of relocation costs.

The dispute traces back to the "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act," introduced by the Senators in April. It failed in committee, but was later included as part of Trump's "big beautiful bill". New language didn't specify Discovery, exactly, but instead directs the transfer of a human-flown "space vehicle" to a NASA center "involved in the administration of the Commercial Crew Program." When the bill was signed on July 4, it set a deadline for the NASA administrator to select a vehicle, and laid out an 18-month window for the vehicle's relocation to Houston.

In their letter, lawmakers describe Houston as "the cornerstone of America’s human space exploration program," and say the city is "honored" to welcome Discovery. However, the Smithsonian asserts it owns the space shuttle outright, and has raised serious concerns about the legalities of removing an artifact from the stewardship of the museum's national collection, not to mention the logistics and costs of physically moving the 122-foot-long (37-meter) orbiter across the country.

In a letter to Congress earlier this month, the Smithsonian said both it and NASA have determined that Discovery's relocation would require partial disassembly of the vehicle and that the minimum cost to do so could range from $120 million to $150 million — far higher than the $85 million allocated (but not yet appropriated) in the OBBA. That estimate also doesn't include the cost of constructing a new facility in Houston to serve as the space shuttle's new home.

The Smithsonian was chosen as Discovery's final home more than 10 years ago. In a nationwide competition to determine where the remaining space shuttles would reside after the retirement of the fleet in 2011, educational institutions, museums, science facilities and space center complexes all submitted bids for consideration, including the Smithsonian and Johnson Space Center.

In the end, Atlantis was given to the Kennedy Space Visitors Center, in Florida, Endeavour to the California Science Center and Discovery to the Smithsonian. According to the Institution, NASA handed over "all rights, title, interest and ownership" of Discovery to the museum in 2012. With that paperwork in hand, the Smithsonian has stressed that it has the legal responsibility for the conservation and long-term stewardship over the shuttle.

Texas lawmakers rejected both the Smithsonian's cost estimates of transporting Discovery and the museum's legal claim of ownership. Their letter to the DOJ cites "industry experts" that estimate the true cost to be more than 10 times less than the Smithsonian's projections, and disputes the position that the Institution is not a government entity.

Historically, the Smithsonian is recognized as a "trust instrumentality," an entity created by Congress to serve a public purpose, but one that operates outside the traditional structure of federal agencies. The Institution receives two-thirds of its funding from the government, but operates independently in the care of its national collection, which is held in trust for the American public to protect its artifacts as a permanent, publicly owned legacy.

In their letter, Cornyn, Cruz and Weber ask the DOJ to determine whether Smithsonian personnel or funds were spent as a part of Institution efforts to obstruct implementation of the law.

"These activities raise significant concerns under the Anti-Lobbying Act, which prohibits the use of appropriated funds for communications intended to influence members of the public to pressure Congress regarding legislation or appropriations matters. The Act also places limits on direct or indirect lobbying efforts funded by federal appropriations," the letter reads.

The lawmakers also expand their complaint to criticize Smithsonian leadership and the museum's exhibits for being part of "a politicized agenda that undermines its responsibilities as a federal government entity," over the Institution's depictions of slavery in American history and its inclusion of transgender women in the upcoming American Women's History Museum.

"This is a silly attempt to silence the Smithsonian from publicly defending their full and permanent 'right, title and interest' of Discovery," Joe Stief, founder of KeeptheShuttle.org, an independent group opposing the relocation, told Space.com in an Oct. 22 email.

The Smithsonian is governed by a Board of Regents. The board's chancellor is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who presides over the Vice President of the United States, three members of the U.S. House of Representatives and three from the Senate, as well as nine citizen regents.

Stief said the lawmakers' complaint mirrors an earlier appeal to Chancellor and Chief Justice John Roberts in August, which drew no public response. "While the Chancellor did not publicly take any actions after the August statement, it appears that Sen. Cornyn is hoping to find a more receptive audience at the Department of Justice," Stief said.

The lawmakers' own letter to the DOJ itself cites multiple court decisions recognizing the Smithsonian as a federal government entity — “a government institution through and through” — which is, "subject to federal law and entitled to government immunities." With that distinction in mind, though, the Smithsonian's communications with Congress might not be considered lobbying, as the lawmakers' letter accuses.

According to guidance from the DOJ and the Government Accountability Office on the Anti-Lobbying Act, direct communications between federal entities and Congress about official business are treated as intragovernmental coordination, not lobbying, since the law targets public-pressure campaigns, not agency correspondence.

Still, whether a formal DOJ review in this instance would support the Texas lawmakers' views is unknown. Such a review could test the authority of the Anti-Lobbying Act over hybrid Institutions, like the Smithsonian, that rely on a combination of federal and trust funding. The Smithsonian has not commented on the lawmakers’ letter, and is unable to respond during the government shutdown.

The International Space Station (ISS) may never again be visited by a space plane.

NASA's space shuttle orbiters were instrumental in building the ISS, and in keeping it operational for its first decade; these reusable spacecraft ferried astronauts to and from the orbiting outpost until the fleet was fully retired in 2011. Five years later, the agency opened the door to more space plane meetups, signing a cargo deal with Sierra Space, the Colorado-based company behind the robotic Dream Chaser vehicle.

That 2016 contract awarded Sierra Space a minimum of seven ISS resupply flights with Dream Chaser and its companion cargo module, called Shooting Star. Nine years later, however, Dream Chaser has still not reached space — and its cargo deal has just been changed.

"After a thorough evaluation, NASA and Sierra Space have mutually agreed to modify the contract, as the company determined Dream Chaser development is best served by a free flight demonstration, targeted in late 2026," agency officials said in an emailed statement on Thursday (Sept. 25).

"Sierra Space will continue providing insight to NASA into the development of Dream Chaser, including through the flight demonstration," they added. "NASA will provide minimal support through the remainder of the development and the flight demonstration. As part of the modification, NASA is no longer obligated for a specific number of resupply missions; however, the agency may order Dream Chaser resupply flights to the space station from Sierra Space following a successful free flight as part of its current contract."

The timeline is getting a bit tight for possible Dream Chaser ISS missions, given the orbiting lab is scheduled to be deorbited in 2030. However, NASA is encouraging the development of commercial stations in low Earth orbit to fill the void left by the ISS' impending departure, and it's possible that Dream Chaser could visit one or more of those in the coming years.

In a different statement released on Thursday, Sierra Space (which spun off from the aerospace firm Sierra Nevada Corp. in 2021) invoked that and other potential use cases for Dream Chaser. Company officials stressed the space plane could still fly a variety of missions down the road, even if the vehicle never makes it to the ISS.

"Dream Chaser represents the future of versatile space transportation and mission flexibility," Fatih Ozmen, executive chair at Sierra Space, said in the statement.

"This transition provides unique capabilities to meet the needs of diverse mission profiles, including emerging and existential threats and national security priorities that align with our acceleration into the Defense Tech market," Ozmen added. "Together with NASA, we are seeking to preserve the exceptional potential of Dream Chaser as a national asset, ensuring its readiness for the next era of space innovation."

Two private American companies currently fly robotic resupply missions to the ISS for NASA — SpaceX, with its Dragon capsules, and Northrop Grumman, which uses a spacecraft called Cygnus. The agency also tapped SpaceX to deorbit the ISS in a controlled fashion in 2030, using a modified version of Dragon.

A provision in President Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" orders the Air and Space Museum to transfer ownership of Space Shuttle Discovery back to NASA for relocation near the space center in Houston. However, the Smithsonian Institution is not backing down on its stance that Congress has no legal authority to mandate Discovery's removal, and they're bringing the receipts.

It all started with the "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act." Introduced by Texas Senators John Cornyn (R) and Ted Cruz (R) in April, this act was an attempt to force the transfer of Space Shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center just outside Washington D.C. to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The act stalled in committee and would have been dead in the water, but was rebranded and folded into the more than 1,100 pages of President Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" in an attempt to force the issue.

While the language of the legislation was altered to comply with Senate reconciliation rules, such as refraining to name Discovery directly, the goal remained the same. The new wording instead refers to the transfer of a "space vehicle" — to be specified by the NASA Administrator within one month of the bill's signing — to a NASA facility "involved in the administration of the Commercial Crew Program" by January 2027. The Smithsonian has rejected the attempt outright, saying it has the paperwork to prove the Institution's ownership of Discovery and that it's critical the space shuttle remains in its care.

The provision in Trump's bill allocates $85 million for Discovery's transfer and directs NASA and the Smithsonian to develop a plan for its completion. At least $5 million of that sum is earmarked specifically for the vehicle's relocation; the rest is meant for the construction of a new facility that can publicly display the shuttle.

The Smithsonian's stance

In a formal response, the Smithsonian Institution says it owns Discovery, which, like the rest of its collection, is held in trust for the American public. The Smithsonian asserts that NASA transferred "all rights, title, interest and ownership" of the shuttle to the Institution in 2012, and that it is "part of the National Air and Space Museum's mission and core function as a research facility and the repository of the national air and space collection."

The Smithsonian was awarded the privilege of providing Discovery's retirement home in 2011, when NASA announced the fates of all the decommissioned space shuttles. During the Senate appropriations committee's full committee markup hearing on Trump's Big Bill July 10, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin (D) proposed an amendment titled "Houston, We Have a Problem," saying, "one of the states that lost in that competition 12 years ago has come up with a new idea: Let's do it over again and make sure Texas wins."

"This is not a transfer," Durbin said, "it's a heist — a heist by Texas because they lost the competition 12 years ago." After expressively iterating his concerns about the issue, Durbin withdrew his amendment, but suggested his colleagues "be honest" about it going forward.

A legal question

The question of whether Congress can, in fact, dictate the transfer of Discovery — or any of the Smithsonian's artifacts — is a murky one, legally speaking. The Institution is considered a "trust instrumentality," meaning it is recognized as a public trust created by Congress, but distinct from federal agencies. This allows the Smithsonian to operate independently while receiving about two-thirds of its funding from Congressional appropriations. Furthermore, legal precedent establishes that artifacts donated to the Institution become Smithsonian property, not federal property.

"This will be the first time ever in the history of the Smithsonian someone has taken one of their displays and forcibly taken possession of it. What are we doing here?" Durbin decried during the hearing. "They don't have the right in Texas to claim this."

A July 24 report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a nonpartisan arm of the U.S. Library of Congress that provides expert analysis on policy and legislative issues, also questions Congress' power to bestow NASA the right to repossess Discovery from the Smithsonian.

"The ability of NASA to designate space vehicles displayed or owned by non-NASA entities for transfer is unknown," the CRS report reads, "It is unclear whether the authority granted to the NASA Administrator in this provision extends beyond NASA to other entities, whether they are private, like the California Science Museum, or public-private, like the Smithsonian."

The Smithsonian is also governed by the Board of Regents: a body led by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as its chancellor, the Vice President, three members of the House and three from the Senate, as well as nine citizen regents. While the Board's leadership has some power to steer the body in the direction of its political will, its civilian members — which include museum professionals and academics — would likely play a key role in resisting those pressures if they so choose. And, while Congress could attempt to override the Smithsonian's authority, such an act would undoubtedly be met with extensive legal pushback.

Now that the Big Beautiful Bill has passed, NASA has begun working to ensure the agency's compliance. A week before the Aug. 3 deadline for the agency Administrator to specify exactly which vehicle it would be relocating, a NASA spokesperson said in a statement to Space.com: "The agency will put all enacted funding to good use and continue to work diligently to execute the President's vision for the future of space as we usher in the Golden Age of human space exploration and innovation."

Logistics

Legal questions notwithstanding, the logistics of moving Discovery may also pose a serious challenge. Transporting Discovery from its hangar at Udvar-Hazy all the way to Houston, Texas, "would be very complicated and expensive, and likely result in irreparable damage to the shuttle and its components," a Smithsonian spokesperson told Space.com in a July 25 email.

In the past, shuttles could be flown across the country on the backs of Boeing 747 jets. This was accomplished using giant mounting machinery known as the "Mate-Demate Devices" located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, or the Armstrong Flight Research Center in California. However, both locations' devices were dismantled in 2014, eliminating the purpose-built infrastructure used to facilitate easy transportation of the space shuttles across long distances. While other methods could ostensibly get the job done, few options exist. And, they're costly.

Even short distances are problematic for the task of transporting something as large as the 122-foot-long (37-meter-long), 78-foot-wide (24-meter-wide) space shuttles. Endeavour's 2012 road trip through Los Angeles, for example, required months of planning and involved citywide road closures and the removal of trees and other roadside infrastructure in the vehicle's path to facilitate the journey from LAX to the California Science Center. And, while Enterprise and Discovery are both housed in large hangers reinforced to support their massive sizes, Atlantis and, eventually, Endeavour were wrapped in protective layers as the buildings designed for their exhibits were, or are, being built around them.

Part of Discovery's status within the Smithsonian's archival trust ensures the museum's responsibility to preserve the orbiter through "world-class preservation and conservation methods," the Institution spokesperson said, warning, "the orbiter is a fragile object and must be handled according to the standards and equipment NASA used to move it originally, which exceeds typical museum transport protocols."

Logistical hurdles for safely transporting Discovery include dismantling the structural supports of its current exhibit, assured clear transit corridors and controlled humidity environments through which it can pass. According to Durbin, NASA and the Smithsonian estimate the true relocation costs could reach upwards of $305 million, far more than the $85 million allocated in the Big Beautiful Bill.

The CRS report breaks those costs down, saying the transportation costs could reach $50-$55 million, with approximately $325 million estimated for the construction of the orbiter's new exhibit and alterations made to the Smithsonian's facilities in preparation for its relocation.

The full statement from the Smithsonian Institution can be read here in full:

"Collecting and preserving artifacts like Space Shuttle Orbiter Discovery is part of the National Air and Space Museum’s mission and core function as a research facility and the repository of the national air and space collection. The Smithsonian Institution owns the Discovery and holds it in trust for the American public. In 2012, NASA transferred “all rights, title, interest and ownership” of the shuttle to the Smithsonian. The museum is charged with collecting, preserving, and displaying aerospace objects and artifacts of historical interest and significance for current and future generations. The museum holds the comprehensive collection of artifacts that document America’s successful efforts to lead the world in human exploration. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center welcomes millions of visitors, at no entry cost, to experience, study, and see one of the museum’s centerpieces: Discovery."

Editor's note: This article was updated at 12:35 p.m. EDT (1735 GMT) July 20, to include contextual information about legal questions surrounding ownership of Space Shuttle Discovery and transportation costs from a CRS report published on July 24.

A set of memorabilia chronicling Sally Ride's pioneering path to space just fetched a pretty penny at auction.

In June 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman to reach the final frontier, on the STS-7 mission of the space shuttle Challenger.

She rode Challenger to space again in October 1984, on the STS-41-G mission. This flight was groundbreaking as well; it was the first spaceflight ever to feature two female crewmembers. (The other woman in the seven-person crew was NASA astronaut Kathryn Sullivan.)

Some mementoes from these flights, and from the path that Ride — a physicist with a doctorate from Stanford University — took to the launch pad came up for auction last Thursday (June 26) in Los Angeles. And there was quite a bit of interest.

The mementoes — a set of more than 50 pieces called the Sally Ride Estate Collection — sold for a total of $145,666, according to Nate D. Sanders Auctions, which organized the event.

The 1978 acceptance letter that welcomed Ride as a member of NASA's Astronaut Group 8 — the first one in the agency's history to include women — brought $5,046. Her official astronaut badge sold for $4,915, and the diary she kept during the STS-41-G mission went for $9,694.

Even more lucrative was Ride's Apollo 11 Robbins medal, which flew to the moon and back during the iconic first-ever crewed lunar landing mission in 1969; it sold for $17,690. Another Robbins medal that Ride owned, which flew on the first-ever space shuttle mission in April 1981, sold for $13,401.

You can peruse the collection, and the price that each piece brought, via Nate D. Sanders Auctions.

Ride, who died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 61 in 2012, was a pioneer in more ways than one: She's also the first known LGBTQ+ person to reach the final frontier.

Ride did not reveal her sexual orientation during her spaceflight career; the revelation came via an obituary published just after her death by Sally Ride Science, the STEM outreach company she launched with Tam O'Shaughnessy in 2001. That obituary identified O'Shaughnessy as Ride's life partner and said they had been together for 27 years.

On July 4, 2006, NASA's space shuttle Discovery launched on a "return to flight" mission that paved the way for it and its sister ships to fly for another five years. Now, a sprawling budget enacted on Independence Day will seemingly lead to Discovery lifting off again — though this time not into space, but rather from its place in the national collection.

President Donald Trump signed into law the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill" today (July 4), a day after the legislation was narrowly passed out of Congress with only Republican support. Deep within the 900-page bill is a provision added by Texas' senators to transfer a "space vehicle" to a NASA center "involved in the administration of the Commercial Crew Program" and "placed on public exhibition at an entity within the Metropolitan Statistical Area where such center is located."

The vague language, written in such a way to skirt Senate restrictions on reconciliation bills, was aimed at achieving the "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act" introduced by Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn in April.

"It's long overdue for Space City to receive the recognition it deserves by bringing the space shuttle Discovery home," said Cornyn in a statement released after the Senate passed its version of the bill in a vote of 50 to 50, with Vice President J.D. Vance breaking the tie.

"Houston has long stood at the heart of America's human spaceflight program, and this legislation rightly honors that legacy," said Cruz, who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation. "It ensures that any future transfer of a flown, crewed space vehicle will prioritize locations that have played a direct and vital role in our nation's manned space program, making Houston, Texas, a leading candidate."

"Bringing such a historic space vehicle to the region would underscore the city's indispensable contributions to our space missions, highlight the strength of America's commercial space partnerships, and inspire future generations of engineers, scientists, and pioneers who will carry our legacy of American leadership in space," he said.

The bill allocates $85 million to move Discovery from the its display home of the past 13 years, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, to Space Center Houston, the official visitor center for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas. "No less than $5 million" is earmarked for the transportation of the winged orbiter, with the remainder going towards the "construction of a facility to house the space vehicle."

Per the bill, the move of space shuttle Discovery must be completed by Jan. 4, 2027. It does not stipulate how the orbiter should be moved. It is not clear if the $85 million will be enough to cover the transfer and display, given that the first time the retired shuttles were brought to their museum homes in 2012, the cost for just the preparation and delivery of each vehicle was $28.8 million, which did not include ground transportation to the museum.

Discovery is the United States' most flown spacecraft in history, with 39 missions between 1984 and 2011. In the process of retiring the shuttle fleet, Discovery was identified by NASA as the "vehicle of record," such that it was kept more intact than Atlantis or Endeavour for the purpose of serving as engineering example at the Smithsonian.

Space Center Houston has not released any details as of yet about how or where it will display Discovery, other than to say it fits into its strategic plans moving forward. The center already exhibits a mock, walkthrough space shuttle, "Independence," mounted atop NASA''s original modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, "NASA 905."

A 2011 investigation by the NASA Office of the Inspector General found "no evidence that the White House, politics or any other outside force improperly influenced the selection decision" of where the space shuttles were originally awarded by the space agency. It is unclear if there are any further actions the Smithsonian or other entities could take to halt Discovery's transfer.

A new documentary about the life and hidden love of astronaut Sally Ride is now streaming, 42 years to the week after she became the first American woman to fly into space.

“SALLY,” from director Cristina Costantini and National Geographic Documentary Films, is available to watch on Disney+ and Hulu beginning today (June 17). The feature-length movie features interviews with some of Ride’s crewmates, her family and, most poignantly, her life partner.

"I can’t recall the exact moment that Sally Ride first captured my imagination, but I know that I’ve been obsessed with her story from a very young age," said Costantini in a statement released by National Geographic. "I was drawn to telling the story of a trailblazing woman fighting for respect in a male-dominated world."

"But above all, I wanted to explore the beautiful, unknown love story between Sally and Tam O’Shaughnessy," she added. "Their enduring relationship was kept secret from the public for 27 long years. Our film celebrates the Sally we all knew through her accomplishments and, for the first time, pays homage to the one we never could know."

“Sally” premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, where it won the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Feature Film Prize. In the time since, it has been screened at various U.S. and international festivals. Tuesday’s premiere on the streaming services followed a broadcast on the National Geographic Channel on Monday evening (June 16).

Ride, one of NASA’s first six female astronauts, made history on June 18, 1983, when she lifted off as an STS-7 mission specialist aboard the space shuttle Challenger. She launched again on STS-41G in 1984, before leaving NASA but continuing to serve the nation’s space program as a leading advocate for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education, especially for young women.

Ride died in 2012 of pancreatic cancer at the age of 61.

"Sally was a true pioneer — a hero who shattered barriers for girls and women and redefined what it means to be a leader," said O’Shaughnessy. "I want the world to see Sally for who she truly was: passionate, private, ambitious, brave, funny, loyal, comfortable in her own skin and, above all, full of love. Our relationship was unique and transformative, and it deeply shaped both of our lives."

"It was important to me that this film not only celebrate Sally’s legacy but also share the story of our bond. I’m forever grateful to Cristina Costantini, National Geographic Documentary Films, Story Syndicate, and the entire team for bringing this story to life, one that couldn’t be told until now and is more relevant than ever," she said.

The first Canadian astronaut to fly into space has died at the age of 76.

Marc Garneau, who made three flights on NASA's space shuttle missions, died on Wednesday (June 4), after what his family described as a short illness.

"We are deeply grateful to Marc Garneau for his extraordinary public service, visionary leadership and enduring contributions to Canada and the world," said Lisa Campbell, president of the Canadian Space Agency, in a statement." Beyond his remarkable achievements, Marc was an exceptional human being: thoughtful, principled and deeply committed to serving others. His integrity and generosity of spirit touched everyone who had the privilege to work with him."

"His legacy will continue to inspire us as we advance the role of space in improving life on Earth," said Campbell.

Garneau's first flight into space was also the first to include seven crew members. Chosen as one of Canada's first six astronauts. Garneau launched on Oct. 5, 1984 as a payload specialist aboard the U.S. space shuttle Challenger.

His seat to space was part of the deal between NASA and Canada's National Research Council (the predecessor to the Canadian Space Agency) in return for Canada providing the shuttle's remote manipulator system, or robotic arm, named the Canadarm. During the STS-41G mission, Garneau tested a new vision system used for controlling the arm, in addition to nine other Canadian-sponsored experiments and demonstrations.

After standing down for the Challenger tragedy in 1986 and being selected to train as a NASA mission specialist, Garneau launched twice more, on STS-77 in 1996 and STS-97 in 2000. On his second flight, he conducted more Canadian experiments and used the Canadarm to deploy and capture a free-flying research platform. On his third and final mission, Garneau helped install the first pair of giant solar array wings for the International Space Station.

In total, Garneau logged nearly 30 days in space while orbiting Earth 465 times.

A captain in Canada's Maritime Command prior to becoming an astronaut, Garneau continued his record of public service by leading the Canadian Space Agency from from 2001 to 2005. He then entered politics, winning a seat in Canada's Parliament, which he held for 15 years. In 2015, he also was named Minister of Transport and then became the Minister of Foreign Affairs prior to his retirement in 2023.

"I don't want to be defined by what I did up there, but rather who I am," Garneau said upon throwing his hat in the ring to became the leader of the Liberal Party and Canada's Prime Minister (he withdrew his candidacy four months later)."

For his role as a Canadian astronaut, Garneau was named as an officer of the Order of Canada in 1984 and then promoted to the rank of companion in 2003. He received the NASA Space Flight Medal and Exceptional Service Medal and was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1992, among other awards.

"A naval officer, a history-making astronaut, and a public servant of exceptional distinction, he brought dedication and duty to every post he held," said Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney in a statement. "May we all remember him for the national pride and possibility he represented to us all."

Garneau was preceded in death by his first wife and mother to two of his children, Jacqueline Brown, and his brother Philippe. He is survived by his second wife, Pam, and four children Yves, Simone, George and Adrien.

The United States Mint is ready to launch the next $1 coin in its American Innovation series, honoring NASA's space shuttle.

The mint on Thursday (May 15) will open sales for the golden coins beginning at noon EDT (1600 GMT). Rolls of 25 coins, struck at either the mint's Philadelphia ("P") or Denver ("D") facilities, will cost $36.25, while bags of 100 coins from either of the two mint locations will run $125.50 each.

Florida's governor chose the space shuttle to represent the state in the U.S. Mint program, which highlights U.S. ingenuity.

"NASA's space shuttles made history as the world's first reusable spacecraft," Kelvin Manning, acting director of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, said in a statement released by the mint. "Today, as we endeavor to send American astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars, NASA and Kennedy Space Center continue to innovate new technologies, build new partnerships, inspire the Artemis Generation and enable new discoveries for the benefit of everyone on Earth."

From April 1981 through July 2011, the shuttle flew from two Florida launch pads on 135 missions and returned to a landing at Kennedy Space Center on 78 of those flights. In between, the winged orbiters were serviced and then mated again with an external fuel tank and two solid rocket boosters within facilities located on Florida's space coast.

Though it suffered two tragedies, claiming the lives of 14 astronauts, the space shuttle also opened Earth orbit to more people and more types of people, flying the first American women and minority crew members into space. Its capabilities enabled the retrieval and repair of satellites, the deployment and upgrade of the Hubble Space Telescope and the assembly of the International Space Station.

"The space shuttle, officially known as the Space Transportation System, remains one of the most iconic and influential spacecrafts in history," said Kristie McNally, the mint's acting director. "It played a pivotal role in advancing space exploration. We are honored to celebrate this major achievement."

The Florida American Innovation $1 coin depicts a space shuttle lifting off from Launch Complex 39 at the Kennedy Space Center. An exhaust plume from its twin boosters fills the lower edges of the design with stars in the background. Included are the inscriptions are "United States of America" and "Florida."

U.S. Mint medallic artist Eric David Custer sculpted the image, and Artistic Infusion Program (AIP) illustrator Ron Sanders designed it.

The heads-side design of all of the coins in the American Innovation program features the Statue of Liberty in profile with the inscriptions "In God We Trust" and "$1." There is also a privy mark in the form of a stylized gear, representing industry and innovation. Mint AIP designer Justin Kunz created the design, and medallic artist Phebe Hemphill sculpted it.

Incused on the coin's edge are "2025," the mint mark ("P" or "D"), and "E Pluribus Unum" ("Out of Many, One").

There is a limit of 10 of each roll or bag of coins per household order. In total, the mint is selling 9,100 rolls of the Philadelphia-struck coins; 8,050 rolls of Denver-struck coins; 3,650 bags of coins from Philadelphia; and 3,450 bags of coins from Denver.

In addition to their availability from the mint's website, the space shuttle coin rolls and bags will also be sold through the mint's sales centers at the Philadelphia and Denver mints and from the mint's headquarters coin store in Washington, D.C.

The mint is not introducing the American Innovation dollars into circulation, though the coins are legal tender.

Introduced in 2018, the American Innovation $1 Coin program has included three previous space-themed entries. In 2019, Delaware celebrated astronomer Annie Jump Cannon, who invented a system for classifying the stars that is still in use today. A year later, the mint released Maryland's coin, which honored the Hubble Space Telescope.

In 2024, the mint released Alabama's coin depicting the Saturn V rocket, which flew the first astronauts to the moon. Florida's space shuttle dollar will be followed by Texas' coin honoring Mission Control later this summer.

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A new flight plan has been filed for a NASA winged orbiter and its jumbo jet transport, four decades after the iconic combination departed on its one and only international goodwill tour.

The Lego Icons Shuttle Carrier Aircraft set recreates the prototype Enterprise and the modified Boeing 747 jetliner as they uniquely appeared when touching down at the Paris Air Show in May 1983, as well as at post-show stops in Italy, England, Iceland and Canada. The $229.99 (€229.99 or £199.99) building kit is scheduled to land on Lego's website for the company's "Insiders" loyalty club members on May 15, followed three days later by an arrival in Lego Stores in the United States and Europe.

The release comes 42 years (and a day) after the 747 and test spacecraft took off from southern California to begin the tour.

"This is a must-have for aerospace enthusiasts and Lego fans alike!" read the Denmark-based toymaker's announcement of the new model on Tuesday (May 6). "Savor every moment, as you bring this iconic tribute to innovation and exploration to life, piece by piece."

NASA first used the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) to carry Enterprise on a series of piggyback trials to confirm that an orbiter that would be launched like a rocket could return to Earth as an unpowered glider. For the 1977 Approach and Landing Test (ALT) program, the jetliner retained its chrome livery from its previous years flying for American Airlines.

Two crews of two NASA astronauts each boarded Enterprise atop NASA 905 (the first SCA's tail number) at Dryden Flight Research Center (today, Armstrong Flight Research Center), where they proceeded through 1 tests, including five flights where the orbiter was released from the jumbo jet at altitude and then flown to a landing on a dry lakebed below.

Four years later, the shuttle Columbia lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the first of 135 missions that it and five other orbiters would fly. NASA 905 (and later, another SCA, NASA 911) was used to ferry the orbiters cross country when either they returned from space to the west coast or returned to their assembly facility for recertification and upgrades.

Before leaving for Europe, NASA gave both Enterprise and NASA 905 new looks. Enterprise was altered to resemble the space-worthy orbiters, more closely mimicking the black and white pattern of their thermal protection system and better matching the placement of their identification markings.

The SCA was repainted white with a gray underbelly and a blue cheatline running the length of its fuselage along its row of windows. After crossing the Atlantic Ocean and touching down in Cologne, Germany, the 747 gained another new marking behind its cabin door — the number "376" — its ID for its next stop, the Paris Air Show in France.

The same "376" appears on Lego's new model of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. (It is not yet clear if the number is a decal, such that builders can pick how they want to configure the SCA's markings.)

By the time Enterprise was back in the United States and NASA 905 reentered service ferrying Challenger and then the new orbiter, Discovery, in the fall of 1983, the "376" was removed. The rest of the livery remained unchanged until 1995, when NASA 911 (and then NASA 905 in 1996) had the NASA logo on its vertical stabilizer changed from the red "worm" to a simplified version of the "meatball."

The carriers flew with that appearance until the end of the space shuttle program in 2011, when the only addition to NASA 905 was mission markings noting its history ferrying space shuttles, including its flights to deliver the retired orbiters to their museum homes. (Enterprise is now displayed with its tail cone still attached at the Intrepid Museum in New York City, while NASA 905 is on exhibit at Space Center Houston in Texas.)

When assembled from its 2,417 pieces, the Lego Icons Shuttle Carrier Aircraft is just over two feet long (24.8 inches or 63 centimeters) and has a wingspan almost as long (21 inches or 53.5 centimeters). It stands 10.6 inches tall (27 centimeters).

In addition to reproducing the look of both vehicles, the Lego Icons Shuttle Carrier Aircraft features landing gear that can be raised or lowered and the mounting system needed to attach the orbiter atop its back. The Lego model of Enterprise includes an attachable tail cone (used to improve aerodynamics with flying atop the 747), detachable main engines and landing gear that can be tucked inside its payload bay.

The kit also has the pieces to build a sturdy display stand and information plaques, the latter displaying facts about the craft.

The Lego Icons Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (set 10360) is not the first Lego model of the 747 and orbiter combo to be released. Thirty years ago in 1995, the company offered the Shuttle Transcon 2 (6544) as part of its Town theme of building kits. It was a much less detailed model, built from just 342 pieces.

The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft is also the second set themed around NASA's winged vehicles be part of the intended for adults Lego Icons line. In 2021, the company introduced its new Space Shuttle Discovery, a 2,354-piece set that built the orbiter and its Hubble Space Telescope payload at 1/70th scale (Enterprise in the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft set is smaller, at roughly 1/112th scale).

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The Hubble Space Telescope is still going strong thanks to an amazing design, operations and science team — and a cadre of spacewalking astronauts.

Hubble launched to Earth orbit 35 years ago today (April 24) with a flawed primary mirror, an image-blurring defect that made the scope the butt of jokes and put its entire ambitious mission in jeopardy.

But Hubble was designed to be serviced in orbit, and astronauts did just that during a space shuttle mission in December 1993. They fixed the mirror problem, giving Hubble the far-reaching 20/20 vision that has made the observatory a scientific powerhouse and an ambassador for the beauty and wonder of the cosmos.

But that wasn't the end of the Hubble hugging: Astronauts visited the observatory four more times, on space shuttle flights in February 1997, December 1999, March 2002 and May 2009.

The spacewalkers did a variety of work on these servicing missions, from installing new and improved scientific instruments to replacing critical hardware such as gyroscopes, the devices that allow Hubble to point precisely at its targets. Their combined efforts allowed the mission to keep humming along for three and a half decades (and counting).

Related: Fixing the Hubble Space Telescope: A timeline of NASA's shuttle servicing missions

But Hubble is showing signs of its advanced age. Last year, for example, the mission team shifted the scope into one-gyro mode after yet another of the devices failed. (Two of Hubble's six gyroscopes are functional at the moment, but the team put the other healthy device on the shelf to save it for future use.) Hubble can still train its powerful eyes on targets, but it now takes longer for the scope to slew from one object to another.

More worrisome, however, is the observatory's inevitable orbital decay: As Hubble circles Earth, the thin, scattered molecules at its altitude create friction, dragging the scope down slowly but continuously.

The space shuttle Discovery deployed Hubble at an altitude of 380 miles (610 kilometers) on April 24, 1990. The scope currently orbits about 326 miles (525 km) above the planet — and that's after the five servicing missions, each of which gave Hubble a slight altitude boost.

Atmospheric drag accelerates the lower you go, as the air gets thicker and thicker. NASA estimates that Hubble will be pulled down to a fiery death in just 10 years or so if nothing is done.

But something could be done — theoretically, at least. In 2022, SpaceX private astronaut and billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman proposed launching a private mission to boost, and also perhaps repair and upgrade, the famous telescope.

Such a mission would use a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon crew capsule. It was floated as a possible part of the Polaris Program, a series of private orbital spaceflights that Isaacman is organizing, funding and commanding.

Isaacman was a serious player; he'd already commanded SpaceX's Inspiration4, the first all-private human orbital flight, which launched in September 2021. So NASA took the proposal seriously, organizing a study and asking other companies to send in their ideas as well.

Last year, however, the agency announced that it had passed on the SpaceX-Isaacman Hubble-boosting mission, saying that the risks seem to outweigh the potential benefits.

After all, entirely new rendezvous and docking procedures would have to be devised for Dragon, which was not designed to service Hubble; the capsule has no robotic arm and no airlock, and it had not supported a single spacewalk at the time that NASA made its decision. (NASA retired its space shuttle fleet in 2011, so using one of the winged orbiters again is not an option.)

Loss of institutional knowledge was also an issue; the most recent Hubble servicing mission occurred nearly 16 years ago, so many of the people who mapped out such a complicated endeavor have retired or moved on to different jobs.

Specific worries were also nested within these general concerns. For example, NASA officials noted that Dragon's thruster exhaust could potentially contaminate Hubble's supersensitive optics.

But the agency's decision was not a permanent, blanket "no." NASA officials stressed at the time that they would be open to revisiting the plan if and when the risk-reward ratio changed — when Hubble's drag-down date is closer at hand, for example, or if the scope suffers some sort of setback.

"While the reboost is an option for the future, we think we need to do some additional work to determine whether the long-term science return will outweigh the short-term science risk," Mark Clampin, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division, said on June 4, 2024, during a press conference about Hubble's newly failed gyroscope and the decision to move to one-gyro operations.

Related: The Hubble Space Telescope turns 35 as NASA budget cuts loom. How many more birthdays will it have?

And the situation is set to change soon, in another way that could facilitate a private Hubble-boosting mission: Isaacman is in line to be the next NASA chief.

President Donald Trump nominated Isaacman for the post on Inauguration Day, and the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation held a confirmation hearing for him earlier this month. Things seemed to go well, and Isaacman appears on track to take NASA's reins in the coming weeks.

It's unclear if Isaacman would push for another look at a private Hubble-boosting mission if confirmed as NASA administrator. But he obviously believes strongly in the merits of such a plan.

"Had a mission been flown, and I was happy to fund it, I believe it would have resulted in the development of capabilities beneficial to the future of commercial space and along the way given Hubble a new lease on life," Isaacman wrote in an X post last year, after NASA made its decision.

He, and private spaceflight, have also made strides since then. Isaacman funded and commanded Polaris Dawn, a private SpaceX flight that circled Earth for nearly five days last September.

During Polaris Dawn, the first flight of the Polaris Program, Isaacman and his three crewmates got farther from Earth than any people had been since the Apollo era. The mission also performed the first-ever private spacewalk, showcasing gear and know-how that could potentially be put to use on a Hubble servicing mission.

Will such a mission ever get a green light? We don't know, but it's certainly worth keeping an eye on, especially as Hubble continues to age and Earth's atmosphere drags it closer and closer to a fiery death.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a masterwork of engineering and human ingenuity. Hubble is comparable in size and weight to a large school bus, but its contributions to science and astronomy could fill libraries.

Not only is Hubble one of Earth's premium sources for absolutely incredible, out-of-this-world imagery, it is also a testament to human curiosity and determination. The telescope has been in operation for over 30 years, undergone a total of five servicing missions and delivered nearly 250 terabytes of data in contributions to our understanding of the universe.

Scientists began working on ideas for a large space telescope in orbit by the end of the 1960s, but it would take nearly a decade of lobbying and refining plans before funding for the project was approved by the U.S. Congress. It was almost another half a decade after that before the telescope received its official name — after famed American astronomer Edwin Hubble. Then, due to the loss of Challenger in January 1986 and the ensuing pause of the space shuttle program, Hubble would wait yet another five years before reaching orbit.

Deployment

Hubble was built with a number of instruments onboard, including the Wide Field Planetary Camera (WFPC), the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS), the Faint Object Camera (FOC), the Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) and the High Speed Photometer (HSP).

Hubble launched on April 24, 1990, stowed inside the cargo bay of space shuttle Discovery. STS-31 was Discovery's 10th launch, and it was the 35th space shuttle mission overall.

Related: NASA's space shuttle: The first reusable spacecraft

One day after reaching orbit (April 25), the STS-31 crew deployed Hubble, and then spent most of the duration of their mission bringing the telescope into operation. Discovery returned to Earth on April 29, leaving Hubble in an orbit 380 miles (612 kilometers) in altitude, where it could begin awing humanity with the secrets of the universe.

At least, that's what was supposed to happen. But the first images beamed back to Earth from Hubble — NASA's $1.5 billion space telescope that took three decades to reach space — were blurry.

In June 1990, NASA announced the discovery of a spherical aberration on Hubble's primary mirror due to a 2-micron mistake in the curvature of the telescope's primary mirror — about 1/50 the width of a human hair. Though small, the defect made the telescope mostly useless to astronomers. Thankfully, Hubble was designed to be serviceable, and NASA's best minds took to the task.

Servicing Mission 1

Hubble's engineers designed the telescope specifically to be upgraded. Its large body features handrails for astronauts to perform maintenance and modular components to facilitate upgrades with the evolution of technology. This allowed NASA to design and plan fixes to bring Hubble back into operation after its disastrous start.

The STS-61 astronauts aboard Endeavor during Hubble's first servicing mission (SM1) spent more than 35 hours across a total of five spacewalks, or EVAs (extravehicular activity) over the course of as many days to complete their planned upgrades. They installed the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR) unit in place of the HSP — akin to Hubble getting a new pair of glasses to bring its blurry vision into focus. The WFPC was replaced with the WFPC2, which came with internal corrective optics, and Hubble's solar arrays and gyroscopes were upgraded to improve the telescope's tracking ability.

The SM1 mission restored Hubble to operational status, and as a result, produced one of the telescope's most iconic images.

Related: 30 years ago, astronauts saved the Hubble Space Telescope

Servicing Mission 2

Hubble's second servicing mission, SM2, was less reparative and more focused on what engineers had intended when they designed the telescope to be serviceable: upgrades and boosting performance.

Discovery launched on STS-82 in February 1997, with two new instruments for Hubble. The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) replaced Hubble's GHRS and FOS. The swap expanded the telescope's vision into near-infrared wavelengths. The mission was also successful in trading out some of Hubble's degraded data recorders, as well as some other, secondary hardware.

Servicing Mission 3A

What was originally scheduled in June 2000 as Servicing Mission 3 (SM3) was split into two missions: An emergency SM3A mission was created for space shuttle Discovery, and STS-102 was added to the launch manifest for December 1999.

Many of the mission's spacewalks exceeded eight hours, making them some of the longest EVAs in shuttle history. During those extended stints navigating Hubble's handrails, NASA astronauts Steven Smith and John Grunsfeld replaced all six gyroscopes inside the telescope's Rate Sensor Unites (RSUs) and installed a new transmitter and data recorder.

During a different EVA, NASA astronauts Michael Foale and Claude Nicollier replaced Hubble's main computer, increasing its processing speed by almost 20 times. They also upgraded Hubble's fine guidance sensors.

Servicing Mission 3B

Hubble's ACS replaced the aging FOC, adding 10 times the imaging power compared to that of its predecessor. Astronauts on SM3B were also tasked with replacing Hubble's solar arrays, which had been worn by years of radiation and debris.

Though smaller, Hubble's new solar arrays provided between 20% and 30% more power. They also replaced Hubble's Power Control Unit (PCU) and added a new cooling system to increase the lifespan of NICMOS.

Servicing Mission 4

Space shuttle Atlantis launched on May 11, 2009, carrying two new instruments for the space telescope: the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

When astronauts replaced the FOC during SM3B, the COSTAR instrument that served as Hubble's glasses became redundant. COS replaced COSTAR during SM4 and became a complement to STIS. Where COS's ultraviolet spectrum detection falls off, STIS can pick up in ultraviolet wavelengths through optical to near-infrared light. The astronauts also managed to repair STIS, which had been inoperable since August 2004, when a failure of its power supply sent it into "safe mode."

Some of Hubble's most iconic imagery, including the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, is attributed to the ACS. In 2007, however, it also suffered an electrical failure. Remedies for STIS and ACS were both similar to each other in the tasks astronauts needed to perform to complete their repairs, but were both very dissimilar to how and where engineers expected astronauts to be performing maintenance on Hubble.

NASA astronauts — including John Grunsfeld, who had already participated in three Hubble servicing missions — trained for two years to develop the tools, strategies and techniques they would need to successfully repair the space telescope for the last time.

Hubble today

In the more than a decade and a half since astronauts last visited Hubble, the telescope has continued to provide amazing views of the cosmos, but its operation has not been without its hiccups. As Hubble has aged, NASA mission managers have tightened their operating constraints, deriving strategies for the observatory to continue functioning despite several issues.

As new gyros installed during servicing missions aged and failed, technicians built deeper margins into the components' parameters. Today, the telescope has two functioning gyros and has been shifted to a one-gyro mode to preserve the other as backup. This presents limitations on some of the science and observations Hubble can make but has allowed the famed scope to continue probing the mysteries of the universe.

NASA hopes the new operating parameters will extend Hubble's life into the 2030s. However, that will likely be the end of the road for the space telescope, functioning instruments or not. Without a boost to its altitude from a visiting spacecraft, Hubble will dip into a lower and lower orbit and eventually burn up in Earth's atmosphere by the mid-2030s.

James Neihouse had one more thing to share. From inside a tote bag, he pulled out a chrome frame displaying 11 strips of tape, each of which had printed text and handwritten notes.

These were labels removed from film cans, the award-winning cinematographer explained. But not just from any film — these were the 41-year-old labels from the third space shuttle mission to carry an IMAX camera into Earth orbit. The rolls were used in the making of the first movie to include scenes shot in space, as first released four decades ago this June.

"So this is from nine rolls of film on STS-41G. This is all astronaut handwriting on this," said Neihouse at the end of a panel discussion celebrating the upcoming 40th anniversary of "The Dream is Alive" at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia on Wednesday (April 9).

The 37-minute documentary about NASA's space shuttle program includes footage shot by the astronauts showing how they live and work in orbit, including the capture and repair of the Solar Max satellite and deployment of an experimental solar array. Veteran journalist and TV news anchor Walter Cronkite narrated the film.

"I've hung on to this for about 40 years," said Neihouse, referring back to the framed tape strips. "I'm giving it to the Smithsonian, hopefully to go with the IMAX camera that they already have."

Related: NASA's space shuttle: The first reusable spacecraft

Presented as a public service

The National Air and Space Museum's connection to "The Dream is Alive" extends beyond the related artifacts in the national collection. The original idea for shooting a giant screen film in space began with a conversation between the museum's first director, an Apollo 11 astronaut, and the co-inventor of the IMAX film format, a Canadian filmmaker.

"One of the things about the film that most people probably don't know is that it's a direct result of a suggestion to Graeme Ferguson from Michael Collins after the National Air and Space Museum opened in 1976," Neihouse told collectSPACE.com in an interview prior to the panel discussion, which was organized by the National Air and Space Society for its members. "Collins suggested to Graham to see about flying an IMAX camera on board the space shuttle."

"And Graeme said, 'That sounds like a really great idea — what's a space shuttle?'" Neihouse said with a laugh as he imitated Ferguson's Canadian accent.

It was also Collins' idea for the museum to have an IMAX theater, and it became only the sixth such theater to open in the United States. From there, it led to the Smithsonian becoming directly involved in the production of "The Dream is Alive," as well as the two shot-in-space IMAX movies that followed it ("Blue Planet" in 1990 and "Destiny in Space" in 1994).

"Collins saw the effect that IMAX films had on our visitors, and he realized that a film made in space would amplify the storytelling about astronaut life there," said the panel's moderator, Jennifer Levasseur, who as a curator in the space history division of the National Air and Space Museum oversees the museum's collection of cameras used in space. "He and others lobbied for such a film, and with Lockheed financing it, NASA couldn't resist."

"These films weren't developed as promotional materials for NASA, but really as a means for everyone involved in the space program to communicate, educate and inspire," said Levasseur.

Related: James Webb Space Telescope stars in breathtaking new IMAX documentary

The closest you could come

"The Dream is Alive" was described as the closest that the public could come to experiencing spaceflight without leaving the planet.

"Those of us who have filmed IMAX in space and who have flown in space have always said that, and it's not just to repeat the sound bite, it's actually true," said Marsha Ivins, a former NASA astronaut who flew into space five times and holds the record for taking part in the most IMAX space films (at three) and advised on the production of others.

Selected as an astronaut in 1984, Ivins was filmed for "The Dream is Alive" during her and her classmates' water survival training at Homestead Air Force Base (today, Air Reserve Base) in Florida, but her scenes did not make it into the movie.

"So they tossed me off the back of a boat, and I'm trying not to drown, and while I'm trying not to drown and remember all the things they told me to do to not drown, here comes this boat right alongside with the film crew," said Ivins. "And while I was not drowning, I did have the presence of mind to express myself with a hand gesture."

"And at the end of it, [associate producer] Phyllis Ferguson comes to me and says, 'We really wanted to put you in the movie, but everything we shot of you was either pathetic or obscene' — and a great relationship with IMAX was born that lasted to this day," Ivins said with a smile.

Keeping 'The Dream' alive

Wednesday's event concluded with a rare screening of "The Dream is Alive." With the move to digital, high-resolution projectors, the 40-year-old film really needs to be rescanned, a project that Neihouse is now championing.

"The parts of the [space-flown] film that made it into what you see on screen are conserved in climate-controlled storage in Los Angeles, as are all of our original space negatives," said Neihouse. "In theory, you could go back and pull any of that IMAX footage, scan it into whatever resolution your digital system is today and have a pristine digital version of the film."

"A lot of the of the films that are extremely important, such as the space films, are being scanned. I know 'The Dreams is Alive' is, as that's something I'm heading up on the committee to work on that for the giant screen film industry," he said.

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NASA's retired space shuttle Discovery may be removed from the Smithsonian and put on display in Houston, if two lawmakers from Texas get their way.

U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Thursday (April 10) introduced the "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act," which directs NASA to take Discovery from the national collection and its Virginia home of the past 13 years and deliver it to official visitor center for NASA's Johnson Space Center.

"It is past time that the Space Center Houston museum houses a space shuttle, given the unique relationship between the entire program and its support staff in Houston," said Cruz, who chairs the Senate committee that has oversight of NASA. "Bringing the Discovery to its final home will offer hundreds of thousands of visitors each year the opportunity to engage with a living piece of NASA's history and understand why Houston is known worldwide as 'Space City.'"

On April 12, 2011, NASA announced that it was awarding its winged orbiters to museums in California, Florida, New York and Virginia. While Atlantis, Endeavour and the prototype Enterprise went on display for the public's education and enjoyment, Discovery — the oldest remaining, space-worthy orbiter in the fleet — was identified as the agency's vehicle-of-record and entered the Smithsonian so that it could serve the additional purpose of supporting future research and study.

"We spent a lot of time and money to preserve Discovery in as near to flight condition as we could to put it in the national collection, so that any future engineer or historian has a reference vehicle to look at, measure or do whatever they need," Dennis Jenkins, a former space shuttle engineer who was the director of NASA's transition and retirement program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, said in an interview with collectSPACE.com.

Related: NASA's space shuttles: Where are they now?

Mission impossible?

The "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act" provides 90 days from the date of its enactment for NASA to submit a report about how it would conduct the move and then 18 months to complete the transfer. Discovery's original delivery to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center took years of planning and required hardware that either no longer exists or can no longer be used without a lot of work.

"One problem is that we have no ground support equipment remaining on the planet to lift it, to install a tail cone or do anything else to prepare for its move. All of that hardware was destroyed after space shuttle Endeavour was stacked," said Jenkins, who today is director of Endeavour's exhibit at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. "We also have no meaningful method of transportation, since neither of the shuttle carrier aircraft are currently operable."

NASA had two modified Boeing 747 jetliners that were used to ferry the shuttle orbiters across the country. One today sits on display at Space Center Houston and is no longer flightworthy. The other is at an air park in Palmdale, California. It had its orbiter attachments removed, needs new engines and would have to be recertified to return to flight.

Moving Discovery by land would require a tremendous undertaking — if it's even possible. The relatively short-distance roadtrip that Jenkins oversaw to transfer Endeavour from Los Angeles International Airport to the California Science Center in 2012 proceeded at a glacial pace and stretched into three days while trees had to be cut back and traffic lights lowered.

Partially disassembling Discovery is also not an option. Removing the wings would result in destroying many of the thermal blankets and tiles that protected the space shuttle as it returned to Earth, and you would still be left with segments too large to enter normal traffic, explained Jenkins.

Related: Space shuttle Endeavour arrives at its new L.A. museum home

What about moving it by water? Ignoring that the closest waterway, the Potomac River, is located almost 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the Udvar-Hazy Center, it would likely require a new, enclosed barge to be designed and built.

"In an open barge, it wouldn't survive the trip," Jenkins said, "and in an enclosed barge large enough to hold Discovery, you would probably stand some risk of losing it in a storm. Even if you were really careful when you moved it, the risk would never be zero."

Were it possible to overcome some or all those obstacles, there would still be the matter of the cost. The bill leaves funding of the move to the NASA administrator using the agency's existing budget without any guarantee of additional allocations by Congress.

"I can easily see this costing a billion dollars," said Jenkins.

Politics vs. posterity

It is not clear what inspired Cornyn and Cruz to introduce this legislation now. Space Center Houston was not consulted and only learned of the proposed move after it was first reported by the Houston Chronicle on Thursday (April 10).

"We're learning the details along with everyone else," said Keesha Bullock, chief communications and marketing officer and interim chief operating officer at Space Center Houston. "We were not part of the development of the legislation, but we welcome the conversation."

According to Bullock, displaying Discovery would not interrupt Space Center Houston's existing expansion plans, but it's too early to say where it would be displayed or how its exhibit would be underwritten.

A Senate press release stated that the bill was motivated in part by the Obama administration having "played politics to keep Houston from getting one of the shuttles."

"It is clear political favors trumped common sense and fairness when the Obama administration blocked the Space City from receiving the recognition it deserves," said Cornyn in a statement.

This is not the first time that such a claim has been made, but no evidence has been put forth to support it, said Jenkins.

"To my knowledge, both the released documentation and lots of conversations with the people involved in the process, there was no pressure from the White House in any regard as to where the orbiters should or should not go," Jenkins told collectSPACE. "The other locations were clearly superior to any place else in all of the criteria."

Space Center Houston's original proposal more than a decade ago was to put the orbiter in a hangar. It lacked any of the immersive features that the California Science Center or Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex had planned, nor did it reach (at the time) the number of annual visitors that the Intrepid Museum had in Manhattan.

Bullock said that, for Space Center Houston, the question is not one of politics, but history.

"Houston led the shuttle program, trained the astronauts who flew on its missions and was the response team for all of the triumphs and tragedies that happened with Discovery, she said. "Bringing it here, from our viewpoint, honors that legacy."

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Why is this amazing?

The International Space Station and a space shuttle, as seen here, joined other historic spacecraft and scenes from space history as part of a student-led drone show for the opening of the Space Foundation's 40th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on April 7, 2025.

Who was behind this space-themed drone show?

A group of 10 high school students, working with their teacher and the St. Vrain Innovation Center in Longmont, Colorado, built, coded and coordinated this show using 300 drones, according to KRDO news radio.

In addition to recreating the ISS and shuttle, the students also programmed the drones to form an astronaut walking on the moon, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter and the symposium's logo.

"To see high school students be able to take hundreds of drones and actually make it look professional, this was kind of like an Olympic opening ceremony," said Damian DiPippa, CEO of Auria Space, in an interview with KRDO.

Who saw this light show?

This drone show was staged over Broadmoor Lake as a crowd of more than 10,000 Space Symposium attendees from 60 countries looked on from the shore.

Now in its 40th year, the Space Foundation's Space Symposium brings together global space professionals from all sectors, providing a platform to explore critical space issues, foster dialogue and drive innovation across the space industry. This year's event runs through April 10, 2025 at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs.

Where can I learn more?

You can read and watch KRDO's coverage of the drone show. You can also read more about some of the announcements at the 40th Space Symposium, including the reveal of a new moon rover and the comments made by NASA's acting administrator about the "weird period" for the space agency right now.

Sally Ride wanted to be remembered as being fearless.

In reality, though, the first American woman to fly into space was scared — and it had nothing to do with her leaving the planet.

"I would like to be remembered as someone who was not afraid to do what she wanted to do and as someone who took risks along the way in order to achieve her goals," said Ride in an interview clip included in the new National Geographic documentary "SALLY."

Director Cristina Costantini balances Ride's stated desire with a longer look at the untold part of the late astronaut's life — as told in the film by Tam O'Shaughnessy, Ride's secret love and life partner for 27 years.

"I have thought long and hard about why Sally could not be open about our relationship, and the only thing that makes sense to me is that she was afraid," says O'Shaughnessy in the film. "Sally was afraid of what people would think, especially her colleagues and her friends, and how that would change what they thought about her."

"That's heartbreaking for me, but also for her," says O'Shaughnessy.

The winner of the 2025 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize — a juried award granted for the most outstanding depiction of science and technology in a feature-length film shown at Sundance — "SALLY" premiered at the film festival on Tuesday (Jan. 28).

Related: Sally Ride: First American woman in space

"The day I met Tam, I knew that she was a brilliant woman. But on that fateful interview day almost a year ago now, I began to appreciate what an incredible, insightful storyteller she is with a vivid memory that could rival anyone," wrote Costantini for Filmmaker Magazine. "Most people would say, 'The shuttle launched that morning.' Tam would start the same story by saying 'I remember as the sun began to rise, the birds were flitting around the foreground of the wetlands as the sun glinted off of the orange external fuel tank in the distance.' This was the greatest gift as a filmmaker, to have a central narrator who is also an incredible writer and storyteller."

"SALLY" combines NASA archival footage, media interviews and appearances and new interviews conducted with O'Shaughnessy, Ride's other family members, fellow astronauts and friends. The challenge for Costantini was to find a way to visually show Ride's private life.

"Sally and Tam didn't document much of their own love story, so very little archival exists of their time together. Our main character also didn't like sharing the depths of her emotions or divulging her feelings to the world around her, which made her an amazing astronaut but hard to capture as a filmmaker," Costantini said in a statement provided by National Geographic.

"We decided to shoot visual sequences on 16-mm film to capture the feeling of falling in love, of having a secret, and of growing old with a loved one," said the director.

Costantini attended Tuesday's premiere at The Ray Theatre in Park City, Utah decked out in a silvery jacket (with NASA logo pin) and matching pants — something of a cross between the aluminum-coated nylon pressure suits that the original Mercury astronauts made famous and the two-piece flight suit that Ride wore to space.

Also at Sundance for the premiere were executive producer Liz Garbus and producers Dan Cogan, Jon Bardin and Lauren Cioffi. Bear Ride, Sally's sister, and former NASA astronaut Cady Coleman were in the audience, as was O'Shaughnessy, whose birthday was celebrated by the filmmakers at a party on Monday night (Jan. 27).

Tickets for online screenings of "SALLY" remain available through the Sundance Film Festival website. Streaming begins on Thursday (Jan. 30) and continues on-demand through to Sunday (Feb. 2).

National Geographic plans a wider release of "SALLY" later this year, with details to be announced.

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The U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame will honor its 2025 class of inductees, record-setting space travelers Peggy Whitson and Bernard Harris, at a public ceremony in Florida this spring. There is a possibility, though, that one of the honorees will not be able to be able to attend the festivities. That is because, at the time, Whitson may be back in space.

Although the Hall of Fame's rules require that all inductees be retired from NASA's astronaut corps, the criteria says nothing about flying commercially. Whitson left the agency's ranks in 2018 and then joined Axiom Space, a Houston-based space services company, for which she has already commanded one private mission to the International Space Station (ISS) and is currently set to fly another this spring.

If the May 31 ceremony and Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) overlap — the launch is currently targeted for no earlier than late April, but it could slip — then Whitson will be the first person to enter the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame while in orbit, after 109 enshrinements on the ground.

That would be the latest record for Whitson, who has also spent more time in space — 675 days on four missions — than any other American or woman. At 64, she is the oldest woman to orbit Earth and has performed the most spacewalks, 10, by any female astronaut.

Related: Peggy Whitson: Record-holding astronaut

Whitson's fellow 2025 Hall of Fame classmate also holds a spacewalk record. Bernard Harris became the first Black astronaut to perform an EVA (extravehicular activity) during the second of his two space shuttle missions in 1995.

"Harris and Whitson continue to serve as exemplary role models in their post-NASA careers. What a tremendous honor to induct them into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame," Curt Brown, who as a space shuttle commander was chosen for induction in 2013 and now chairs the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF), the organization that stewards the selection process, said in a statement.

Harris became a NASA astronaut in 1990, after he completed a fellowship at Ames Research Center in California and served as a research scientist and flight surgeon at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

His clinical investigations into how astronauts adapt to space led to the creation of in-flight health countermeasures, including exercise equipment used today on the ISS.

As the crew medical officer on STS-55, his first mission into space in 1993, Harris conducted the first physical examination in space, the first telemedicine conference from space and administered the first IV (intravenous injection) on humans in space. While on board the space shuttle Columbia, Harris helped conduct nearly 90 biological and Earth science studies during the 10-day flight.

Harris' second launch was on Discovery with the first shuttle crew to rendezvous with Russia's space station Mir. On Feb. 9, 1995, together with his fellow STS-63 crewmate Michael Foale, Harris exited the shuttle for a 4-hour, 39-minute EVA. During the spacewalk, the first by an African-African astronaut, Harris tested new thermal protection for spacesuits, used a new digital checklist, handled a satellite and evaluated tools for later use outside of the ISS.

In total, Harris logged more than 18 days in space. He left NASA in 1996 but continued to contribute to the agency by furthering his research and serving on numerous health, safety and advisory panels. He is currently the president and CEO of Vesalius Ventures, which invests in healthcare technologies, and the founder and president of the Harris Foundation, which has partnered with NASA to provide science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs throughout the nation for more than 25 years.

Related: Interview with Bernard Harris, the 1st African-American spacewalker

Whitson, like Harris, began working at the Johnson Space Center as a research scientist before being named an astronaut candidate with NASA's 16th class in 1996. She was serving as the project scientist for the Shuttle-Mir program when Harris made his history-making EVA.

Whitson's three NASA spaceflights were all stays on the International Space Station lasting six months or longer. As a flight engineer on the Expedition 5 crew in 2002, she launched and returned to Earth on the U.S. space shuttle, was named the station's first science officer and was one of only 16 NASA astronauts to perform a spacewalk wearing a Russian Orlan spacesuit.

From October 2007 to April 2008, Whitson served as the first female commander of the ISS, leading Expedition 16. Arriving and departing by Russia's Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft, Whitson oversaw the continued assembly of the orbiting laboratory, including conducting five spacewalks — two of which were unplanned, in response to a failing rotary joint for the station's power-providing solar arrays.

Back on Earth, Whitson was appointed chief of NASA's Astronaut Office in 2009. She was both the first woman and the first non-military officer to hold the position.

Whitson returned to the ISS on Soyuz MS-03 in 2016 and spent almost 200 days aboard the complex as part of its 50th, 51st and 52nd expedition crews. It was during this flight that she broke the record for the most spacewalks by a woman and surpassed the most total time in space by an American.

As Axiom Space's director of human spaceflight, Whitson became the first woman to lead a commercial spaceflight, Axiom Mission 2 (Ax-2), and only the second NASA astronaut to return to the ISS after leaving the U.S. space agency. She is now assigned to Ax-4, which will mark a return to human spaceflight for India, Poland and Hungary by her three crewmates.

NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida will host the Astronaut Hall of Fame ceremony under its display of the retired space shuttle Atlantis. The public is invited to see Harris and Whitson be added to the hall's honorees.

"The U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame welcomes two exceptional and trailblazing veterans of the space program who contributed significantly to NASA's mission and program," said Brown.

A formal gala, organized by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, will celebrate the two new inductees that evening at Kennedy's Apollo/Saturn V Center.

The ASF administered the committee of Astronaut Hall of Fame members, former NASA officials, historians and journalists who selected the 2025 class. To be eligible, astronauts must have made their first flight at least 15 years before the induction, must be U.S. citizens and either a NASA-trained shuttle commander, pilot, mission specialist or a space station commander or flight engineer who has orbited Earth at least once.

Founded in 1990, the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame is part of the Heroes & Legends attraction at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Harris and Whitson's likenesses, etched in glass and mounted with their embroidered mission patches, will go on display after they are inducted.

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NASA honored its fallen space explorers during its annual "Day of Remembrance" on Thursday (Jan. 23).

The agency held events at a number of its facilities around the nation, including Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida and Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The proceedings commemorated the lives lost in NASA's three space tragedies — the Apollo 1 fire in January 1967, the space shuttle Challenger explosion in January 1986 and the shuttle Columbia disaster in February 2003.

"It is an emotional and solemn reminder that we cannot let the decades separate us from these tragedies and numb us to their lessons, and even as we embark on new bold ventures, we must keep the memories of these losses near us," KSC Deputy Director Kelvin Manning said during the center's ceremony on Thursday.

"We must honor their sacrifice by fortifying our commitment to safety and excellence as new generations of space explorers follow their footsteps," he added.

NASA holds its Day of Remembrance every year in late January, which is around the time when all three disasters occurred.

The Apollo 1 fire erupted on Jan. 27, 1967, while team members were testing the mission's command module on the ground. The three Apollo 1 astronauts — Roger Chaffee, Ed White and Gus Grissom — were inside the spacecraft at the time, and all of them perished.

Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch on Jan. 28, 1986, killing all seven astronauts on board: Dick Scobee, Michael Smith, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair (the second black American to reach space), Ellison Onizuka (the first Asian-American to reach space), Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe (the first teacher in space).

Columbia was lost while reentering Earth's atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003, again claiming the lives of all seven astronauts: Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla (the first Indian-American to reach space), Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon (the first Israeli to fly to the final frontier).

The space shuttle and International Space Station are set to launch onto dollar coins in celebration of the advancements made by two states.

The United States Mint has released the designs of the Florida and Texas entries in the American Innovation $1 Coin Program. The coins are among the four to be released in 2025, as the series enters its eighth out 16 years.

"The mint works with the office of the governor or other chief executive for each state, territory or city, along with subject matter experts, to determine design concepts emblematic of innovation that are significant and meaningful to its jurisdiction and/or its role in the nation," read the mint's announcement of the new designs. "Once the Secretary of the Treasury approves the design concepts, the designs are developed and reviewed."

The obverse, or heads-side, which is common to all of the coins in the American Innovation series, features the Statue of Liberty in profile. Created by artist Craig Campbell, the obverse also includes a privy mark of a stylized gear, representing industry and innovation.

Related:

Florida's dollar, to be released this spring, commemorates NASA's 30-year space transportation system on its reverse (or tail's side). All 135 missions launched from the state's Cape Canaveral, with almost half landing there as well.

"This design presents an image of a NASA space shuttle lifting off from Launch Complex 39 at Florida's Kennedy Space Center. Smoke from the solid rocket boosters fills the lower edges of the design with stars in background," read the mint's description.

The design closely matches one of the nine concepts that the mint's artists began with and which was preferred by both the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) and Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) in reviews held last year. The final version adds the initials of the designer, Ron Sanders and the sculptor Eric Custer.

The coin retains the original proposed style for the stars behind the shuttle, which at one reviewer found to be "a little odd" and recommended they be changed.

Texas chose Mission Control for its dollar, a theme that proved to be more of a challenge for the mint's artists to represent. The members of the CFA rejected all nine original ideas, asking for new and revised versions to be submitted.

The CCAC opted for one of two designs showing the interior of the control center at Johnson Space Center in Houston. In the end, neither panel's advice was taken by the Secretary of the Treasury.

"This design features an American astronaut conducting a spacewalk outside the International Space Station. The image represents the culmination of the Mission Control Center's economic, logistical and intellectual support for NASA's human space program, as well as its support of astronauts from the many countries that participate in the International Space Station program," read the mint's release.

The design appears to be based on separate reference photos for the astronaut and the space station, as the earlier appears to be far off the latter without a tether connecting the two. (If so, it is ironic, because it is scenario that Mission Control would never allow happen.)

Sanders is again credited as the designer, with mint medallic artist John McGraw the sculptor.

Texas' coin is set to go on sale this summer. Release dates for both coins have yet to be announced.

Both states' dollars will be struck at the mint's Philadelphia and Denver facilities. They will initially be sold as uncirculated coins in rolls of 25 and bags of 100 for $36.95 and $123.50, respectively.

The Florida and Texas coins are the fourth and fifth in the American Innovation series to focus on space themes. The first, issued for Delaware in 2019, honored astronomer Annie Jump Cannon, who invented a system for classifying the stars that is still in use today. A year later, the mint released Maryland's coin, which celebrated the Hubble Space Telescope.

In 2024, the mint released Alabama's coin honoring the Saturn V rocket that lofted the first astronauts to the moon.

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The longest-lived president in United States’ history, Jimmy Carter’s voice will continue to extend “into the cosmos” beyond his death at 100.

Carter, who died on Sunday (Dec. 29) at his home in Plains, Georgia, recorded the country’s official message that was launched in 1977 and now travels beyond our solar system on the Voyager Golden Record. He addressed his remarks to whatever civilization or species might come across the twin probes in the future: “We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.”

“We are saddened by the passing of President Jimmy Carter, who contributed to the Voyager Golden Record currently traveling through interstellar space,” NASA officials posted to the agency’s social media accounts. “Carter's message of peace continues to reach across the ‘vast and awesome universe.’”

Carter served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. In addition to being in office when the Voyager probes left Earth, he was president when NASA recruited its first women, Black and Asian astronauts in 1978, and when Skylab, the country’s first space station, fell back to Earth in 1979.

Related article: Presidential Visions for Space Exploration: From Ike to Biden

Carter’s greatest legacy to the space program, though, may be the support he gave to funding the continued development of the space shuttle. Without the additional money that NASA received in 1979 and 1980 — years in which Carter otherwise sought broad spending cuts — the iconic winged orbiter that flew for more years than any other U.S. spacecraft in history may have never left the ground.

Although Carter was known to favor NASA’s robotic missions over launching astronauts, he saw value in moving forward with the space transportation system.

“I was not enthusiastic about sending humans on missions to Mars or outer space,” Carter said in a 2016 interview with the website Ars Technica. “But I thought the shuttle was a good way to continue the good work of NASA. I didn’t want to waste the money already invested.”

On Oct. 1, 1978, Carter received an update on the space shuttle’s progress while on a visit to Kennedy Space Center for the 20th anniversary of NASA’s founding. During that same trip, Carter helped honor some of the nation’s most accomplished astronauts with the presentation of the first Congressional Space Medal of Honor awards.

The medal's first recipients included Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong, Gemini pilots Frank Borman and Charles "Pete" Conrad and “original” Mercury astronauts John Glenn, Virgil "Gus" Grissom (posthumously) and Alan Shepard.

Carter and former first lady Roslyn returned to the Florida spaceport for a tour in 2002, when the then-former president met with astronauts who flew on the shuttle, including then-center director Roy Bridges.

Beyond his interactions with the U.S. space program, Carter was hailed for his decades of volunteer service after he left office. He was honored for such in 2002 with the Nobel Peace Prize.

"President Carter was the pinnacle of a public servant, dedicating his life to making our world a better place," said Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator, in a statement. "He showed us each and every person has the power to make a difference."

"From providing for those in need, protecting the environment and championing civil and human rights, President Carter was a good man who always strove to do what was right. He embodied the very best of humanity and his life and legacy are an example to the United States and the world," said Nelson.

Public memorials will be held in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., followed by a private interment in Plains, Georgia. The final arrangements for Carter’s state funeral, including all public events and motorcade routes, will be released by the Joint Task Force-National Capital Region.

According to The Carter Center, members of the public are encouraged to visit the official tribute website at www.jimmycartertribute.org. This site includes the official online condolence book, as well as print and visual biographical materials commemorating Carter’s life.

The dictionary defines "spacewoman" as simply "a woman astronaut." In the case of its latest usage, though, the term carries more meaning.

"Spacewoman," a new documentary from Haviland Digital and Tigerlily Productions, tells the story of Eileen Collins, the United States' first female astronaut to pilot and command a space shuttle mission. The title seems obvious given its subject, but it was not something that Collins herself ever considered.

"The funny thing about it is, I would never have thought of it," said Collins in an interview with collectSPACE.com. "At one point [during the making the film] I asked, 'Did we come up with a title?' and Hannah said, 'Spacewoman.' And it made me wonder why I don't think of it."

For her part, director Hannah Berryman says it was the producers who came up with the title, but it was a perfect fit. 

Related: New film 'Spacewoman' to celebrate NASA's Eileen Collins, 1st woman space commander and pilot

"It just stuck," she said. "It was really important to me that it [conveyed] it wasn't just that Eileen was a woman who went to space, but that she was the pilot and in command." 

For Collins, it was also about reaching a wider audience. 

"I think it will draw in some younger viewers, and I really want high school and college age people, men and women, to watch the film, because I think it will help them decide to someday be part of the space program, or that they could work in the space industry," said Collins. "I like that it's simple, it's descriptive and it's exciting. That is why I am happy with it."

collectSPACE spoke with Collins and Berryman ahead of the world premiere of "Spacewoman" as part of the annual Doc NYC film festival in New York City on Saturday (Nov. 16). In addition to two in-person screenings with both its star and director in attendance, tickets are available to watch the film online from Sunday (Nov. 17)  through Dec. 1.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

collectSPACE (cS): The documentary is based in part on your autobiography written with Jonathan Ward, "Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars: The Story of the First American Woman to Command a Space Mission," as published in 2021. Where did the idea of making the book into a film originate?

Eileen Collins: Keith Haviland [of Haviland Digital]. He has made quite a few space films. He produced "Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo" and "The Last Man on the Moon." He has also done aviation documentaries, including "Lancaster: Above and Beyond" and "Spitfire," for example.

He contacted my co-author, Jonathan Ward, the same month that the book came out. We were interested but busy promoting the book, so a year went by before we really started talking about doing the film.

cS: Hannah, with Eileen's book to work with, how did you arrive at the approach you followed for the film?

Hannah Berryman: In my films, I am interested in exploring the emotional aspect of how we live our lives and the things that we do. So immediately I knew that Eileen's family story — her journey through it, from the coming up that she had to actually being a woman going into space with her own family — I knew that would be central ot the film. I also could tell that her final mission [STS-114, NASA's return to flight after the loss of space shuttle Columbia] was such a pivotal one and there was quite a lot in jeopardy.

So I thought both stories would collide in that final mission. We would hear how everything played out emotionally and physically in the mission.

cS: Where did you source the archival video and photos you used in the film?

Berryman: We had an archive researcher in the U.S. who specializes in NASA, but we also had a great resource in Eileen and checked all of her archives on VHS and then DVD. Especially important were her home videos, which I think were invaluable to telling her personal tale, the backdrop to all her public-facing footage.

Eileen was also given the mission highlights from each of her flights, including the footage she and her crewmates shot.

So I think we couldn't have have really made the film without the mixture of the footage that we had, and that's what we used.

cS: "Superwoman" includes footage shot of video calls that you, Eileen, had with your family while in space. Was this the first time you have shared these calls with the public?

Collins: Those are private, NASA never put those out. They are called family conferences. We only got them on flights when the mission was over a certain number of days. My daughter was only three and a half back then.

So I had the family conference videos from my third spaceflight, STS-93, and also from 114. Hannah repeatedly asked me for them. "We really want it. We really want it." So I dug them out from a box somewhere in a corner. It took me a while to find them.

cS: Astronauts Michael Foale, Cady Coleman and Charlie Camarda appear in "Spacewoman," each having flown with Eileen. Was there an attempt to reach out to other crew members?

Berryman: I don't have lots and lots of interviews in the films I do, because I want you to get to know the people who you see on screen, who are the supporting cast. So I only really wanted to talk to one person from each of Eileen's four missions and Mike Foale, having flown on STS-63 and 84, covered the first two.

With Cady, it was good to have another woman colleague, and she was on Eileen's first command mission. And then when we were thinking about who to have from STS-114 and Charlie came up as someone who Eileen had talked well about. He was candid and a good talker — you could listen to him and be engaged, as with Mike and Cady.

So we didn't go further. We didn't interview anyone else from those missions. We did have members of Mission Control with Wayne Hale and Paul Dye, and we had Marsha Dunn who as a journalist was covering Eileen's flights.

Collins: I might add that I did contact my mission commanders; Jim Wetherbee was on 63 and Charlie Precourt on 84. So they both knew that the film was being made.

Related: NASA's space shuttle: The first reusable spacecraft

cS: Eileen, your son and daughter, as well as your husband, are also interviewed. Is this the first time your children have shared their memories on camera?

Collins: For my son, yes. Now, he was four years old when I flew my last mission, so Luke — that's his name, Luke Youngs — he had a dim memory of that time.

As for Bridget, the first time being interviewed, it's tough. It's tough to be on camera. I told her I thought she did a really good job and was authentic, which is what matters.

cS: The topic of fear comes up several times during the documentary. Eileen, why do you think it's difficult for the public to understand how you could not experience fear when launching or returning from space?

Collins: I tell people fear is normal, it's human and everybody has it. The way you conquer it is by learning everything about what you are afraid of.

I learned about the space shuttle technically, as well as I got to know the people that worked on the shuttle, everyone from the technicians that put their hands on the equipment to the engineers. I think as a leader, it was also very important for me to give confidence, not only to my crew, but to my family.

For example, after the Columbia accident, I stayed fully engaged in whatever was going on with the return flight issues as well as the accident investigation. Staying fully engaged on that is what gave me the confidence and the commitment to say, yes, it's safe. It's now time to go.

If I had any fear, I would have said, no, we're not ready yet. Let's go fix this particular issue that I'm concerned about. And I wouldn't have gone unless they answered any concerns that I had.

Berryman: That is the amazing thing about Eileen that I hope comes across in the film: She learned that, even as a child, you can't control everything. So you worry about the things you can control and the others, you just have to get on with. That is what was amazing about the presence of mind Eileen has.

Eileen was a big part of a new step for women. And for someone like herself, from her background, to overcome what she did and all of her family to come through it in such an amazing way, I hope people come away from "Spacewoman" inspired.

Collins: Astronauts are humans. We are regular people. We have families. We have issues going on in our lives, similar to what other people have. I think the way that Hannah did the movie shows that we know we're not just robots. We're not perfect specimens. You know, we have a human side to us and I think that is something that comes across when watching the film.

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NASA's retired space shuttle Discovery has been reunited with one of its last crew members.

The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum debuted Robonaut-2 (R2), NASA's first dexterous humanoid robot flown into space, on Thursday (Oct. 24). The two-armed, two-legged robotic testbed launched to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard Discovery's final mission in 2011.

R2 is now on exhibit at the Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia.

"R2 is looking straight at Discovery's starboard side," said Jennifer Levasseur, space history curator at the National Air and Space Museum, in an interview with collectSPACE.com. "It is has taken the place formerly occupied by Gemini 7."

NASA's Gemini 7 spacecraft had been in the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar at Udvar-Hazy Center since it opened in 2003. The 1965 two-seat capsule was relocated to the Air and Space Museum's flagship building on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. to become part of the "Destination Moon" gallery in 2022.

Related: In photos: Robonaut 2, NASA's robot butler for astronauts

R2 is exhibited out in the open next to the Gemini paraglider capsule and Apollo boilerplate command module.

"R2 is behind barriers, but like other artifacts in that area, it is not protected by glass or acrylic or anything like that," said Levasseur. "I'm really excited to see the possibilities with that."

"It has such a beautiful, reflective visor. I think there will be some pretty incredible selfies to come from it," she said.

To space or the Smithsonian

Developed in partnership with General Motors and Oceaneering Space Systems, R2 was designed to test how human-like robots could help astronauts with tasks on a space station. Though never realized, NASA envisioned a day when R2 could be moved outside of the ISS to perform simple or routine tasks, saving astronauts from performing some spacewalks.

Before that could happen, R2's component systems — from image recognition to control algorithms — needed to be verified in orbit. Working with a task board, R2 successfully demonstrated that it was able to press buttons, flip switches and turn knobs, as well as handle tools. An ISS crew member was also able to teleoperate R2, commanding it to catch a floating object.

When launched on Discovery's STS-133 mission, R2 only had an upper torso. Its two legs ("climbing manipulators") were added in 2014, which is when its problems began. The upgrades to support R2's new appendages triggered intermittent power failures and, even worse, NASA's attempts to troubleshoot the issue caused more electrical shorts.

As such, NASA decided to bring R2 back to Earth, so it could repaired and sent back to space. In 2018, the robot splashed down aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. The plan then was to quickly service R2, so its testing could resume on the ISS.

Instead, it remained grounded at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"Other things took priority," Levasseur told collectSPACE. "Basically, things like a new toilet and other crew equipment took priority, and at some point the decision was made to give up on trying to get it back on the station."

The droid they were looking for

R2, as it now stands at the Udvar-Hazy, is complete.

"We have the legs. It is displayed as a single robot, put together on one of its engineering stands. It has its arms and legs extended," said Levasseur.

It is believed it is also back to being fully functional.

"I believe it has been repaired to the point of being 'operational,' but it will not operate while it is here," Levasseur said. "NASA engineers did activate certain joint systems during the exhibit's set up. They had to peel off some of the fabric overlay and then some of the metal or plastic panels that cover the interior components so that they could activate the joints to be able to reposition the arms."

Levasseur has spent the past three years working on bringing R2 to the National Air and Space Museum. Technically, it could still be called back into service.

"It is on loan, so at least for the next four years, it will be on display here," said Levasseur. "NASA could recall the loan and go and potentially fly it to the station, but it doesn't seem as though that's really in the cards in terms of the availability of room on a spacecraft to take it back up."

"It has been accepted by our collections committee and approved by the director — that happened in 2021 — so the intention is, at least for us, we would like to see it transferred at some point," she said.

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The parts for a full-size space shuttle mockup are now about a city block closer to being reassembled and restored for public display.

The City of Downey in California began relocating the winged orbiter "Inspiration" from a maintenance yard — where it has sat in pieces for more than a decade — to a nearby facility on Thursday (Oct. 17). The move, which attracted a crowd of spectators, is the first step toward exhibiting the model at the Columbia Memorial Space Center in the years to come.

"I had a dream that I would pull a space shuttle with a golf cart down the street... and [now it has] happened," said Ben Dickow, president and executive director of the Columbia Memorial Space Center. "There are going to be some kids who walk through this thing when it's out on display ... and a spark is going to go off and they're going to become an engineer or a scientist or a lawyer or a poet. These kind of objects tied to where they are brings out the best in people, and that's what we're trying to do here."

Divided onto four flatbed trucks, including the crew cabin, parts of the payload bay and the aft section with its three main engines, the mock shuttle hit the road at about 9:05 a.m. PDT local time (12:05 p.m. EDT or 1605 GMT) and made its way down Bellflower Boulevard, pausing midway for a brief ceremony with Columbia Memorial Space Center leaders, state representatives and local officials.

Related: NASA's space shuttles: Where are they now?

"This is a legacy," said Mario Trujillo, the mayor of Downey. "What a magical, historical day. I'm going to remember this. This is one of those deep memories that you're going to have, when we moved this beautiful, beautiful piece of aerospace history. And I just couldn't be more proud to be your mayor."

"I want every kid in Downey, California to know about our legacy. That's why your council is investing the necessary dollars to continue to be the jewel in Southern California," said Trujillo.

To ease the move, the road was closed to traffic throughout much of the day.

Once all the parts are relocated on Friday (Oct. 18), work will begin to assess the condition of the plywood and plastic model. The facsimile shuttle was built in 1972, two years before NASA finalized the design of the winged spacecraft and selected the mockup's maker, North American Rockwell (today Boeing), to build the orbiters that would fly 135 missions over a 30-year span.

Initially used to sell NASA on its concept, Rockwell continued to update the unnamed orbiter mockup as a fit check tool for instruments and payloads being built for the space-worthy vehicles. At some point losing one of its wings and part of its vertical stabilizer (tail), the mock shuttle continued to serve as a showcase piece for visiting politicians and other guests, until the Downey plant closed.

It was then that it became city property and put into storage. Rediscovered in 2012, when it gained its name "Inspiration" through a public contest and was briefly exhibited under a tent at the Columbia Memorial Space Center, it was then moved to the maintenance yard for storage while funding was secured for its restoration and a plan could be put together for its display.

"The City of Downey is proud of its rich legacy in American aviation and space history. The history of the NASA Downey site, where the space center is located, is intertwined with the identity of the city." read the 2023 project proposal that led to Thursday's move. "The Downey site was the home of research, development and engineering of such crucial programs as the Navajo missile, Little Joe Rocket, Apollo capsules and space shuttle orbiters."

"In celebration of this aerospace history, the city's goals include the preservation and showcasing of its aerospace heritage and the creation of learning opportunities for future generations," the report read.

As the state-funded $800,000 restoration gets underway, so will construction of Inspiration's new home, a 29,000-square-foot (2,700 square meters) two-story building at the Columbia Memorial Space Center that will include a dedicated space to exhibit the 122-foot-long by 35-foot-tall (37 by 11 m) orbiter mockup, as well as an event space for up to 300 attendees, offices and classrooms.

In addition to "Inspiration," the plan is for the building to also house other exhibits and space artifacts.

The Downey exhibit will be the second space shuttle orbiter display in the Los Angeles area. The California Science Center is currently constructing the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center to exhibit NASA's orbiter Endeavour with the last built-for-flight space shuttle external fuel tank and a pair of flight-worthy solid rocket boosters in a launch pad-like configuration.

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The new home of NASA's retired space shuttle Endeavour has reached new heights, and the California Science Center is celebrating with a "topping off" ceremony.

Now just over a year since the science center began stacking the solid rocket boosters that went on to form the world's only vertical, launchpad-like exhibit of a winged orbiter, the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center is ready for its highest installed parts. On Thursday (Oct. 10), three steel beams were raised nearly 200 feet (61 m) above the ground to crown the building's diagrid structure.

"It is a significant milestone for the science center and for those we serve," said Jeffrey Rudolph, president and CEO of the California Science Center, in an interview with collectSPACE.com. "It keeps us on track to complete construction of the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center by the middle of next year."

The steel beams, each signed by the hundreds of construction workers, project managers and science center staff and supporters who have made this 200,000-square-foot (18,600 square meters) expansion possible, were lifted one at a time, one each hour, starting at 7:30 a.m. PDT (10:30 a.m. EDT or 1410 GMT). After the beams were in place and, observing tradition, a small spruce tree was placed atop the topmost point, a ceremony (on the ground) was followed by a barbecue lunch for the whole team, including MATT Construction, ZGF Architects, building engineers Arup and Plas-Tal Manufacturing.

Related: End of year, end of exhibit: Space shuttle Endeavour goes off view for a few years

"This is another major step toward making the vision for the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center a reality," Lynda Oschin of the Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Oschin Family Foundation, said in a statement. "This major expansion of the science center will honor [my husband's] legacy by inspiring generations of children to pursue lives of adventure, innovation, and discovery, and to explore careers in science, math, and engineering."

The diagrid was chosen for the Oshin Air and Space Center because of its ability to create the illusion of being outside. A framework of diagonally intersecting steel beams, it will allow for an open interior with no columns to block sightlines.

"The angle of the roof is set for that first view, so you're looking up at it and won't obstruct the view of Endeavour, and then it continues past the top of Endeavour," said Rudolph. "It was all designed to give clear and unobstructed views of the full stack from the first time you see it after a pre-show and, at the same time, maximize the volume of the space that we're building for a number of reasons."

The cone of the diagrid is 150 feet wide and 232 feet long (46 by 71 m), and 150 feet tall (46 m) atop a 50-foot (15 m) wall. In total, the steel weighs approximately 2 million pounds (907,000 kilograms).

With the skeleton erected, workers will next focus on installing the skin, or outer panels, of the building and removing the supports that held the diagrid as it was being erected.

"The first thing they need to do before they do anything else is start disassembling and taking out the temporary structure within the building. Like an arch, the diagrid did not support itself until it was completed," Rudolph told collectSPACE.

Workers will also get started removing the scaffolding surrounding Endeavour, which protected the space shuttle stack while the building was erected around it.

The Oschin Air and Space Center building is expected to be completed by next summer, but it will still be a year or more away from opening. In addition to Endeavour, the museum will house more than 100 aircraft and spacecraft, all of which need to be moved in and set up for display. Among the larger pieces will be a space shuttle solid rocket booster segment and the forward section of a Korean Air Boeing 747 jetliner.

A debut date for the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center has not yet been set.

"We'll schedule that after all of the exhibits and artifacts are put in and the job has been finished in a few years," said Rudolph.

Click through to collectSPACE to see more photos and drone video from the topping off of the Samuel Air and Space Center.

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Canada's first astronaut in space can't believe how far the nation has come in 40 years.

Marc Garneau, who mostly flew with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), embarked on the country's first space shuttle mission in October 1984. Garneau celebrates that journey in his new book, "A Most Extraordinary Ride" (Penguin Random House, 2024). Four decades after his pioneering flight, Garneau told Space.com how amazed he was that CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen has been assigned to the Artemis 2 moon mission.

Garneau, first hired by Canada's National Research Council before CSA was formed in 1989, flew three times in space, on the shuttle missions STS-41G (in October 1984), STS-77 (May 1996) and STS-97 (November-December 2000). He later was a Canadian government minister — and even CSA president. But one of his most memorable spaceflight moments was wielding the Canadarm robotic arm, as Garneau shares in the interview below.

This interview was edited for length and clarity and focuses on the Canadian NRC and CSA astronauts; note that Canadians have flown to space with NASA and on private spaceflight missions as well.

Space.com: What I found interesting about your book was you had at least three distinct career phases through it. You had the beginning when you were focused on military, and then the second when you were in the space program, then the third, where you were mostly in politics. I was wondering if you could talk a bit about that journey as you were moving through these different phases?

Marc Garneau: I came out of the gate as a curious person, but really wanted to embrace life. I think I had a certain spirit of adventure and was, perhaps, risk-tolerant. In my teenage years, I didn't have the necessary judgment to go along with that curiosity and made some silly mistakes, and learned from those mistakes, and carried on.

Related: Canadarm2 was not designed to catch spacecraft at the ISS. Now it's about to grab its 50th 

I left home when I was 16, because I wanted to get out there in the big world and join the Navy. I was very happy with that, because that was the kind of job I wanted. I didn't want to sit behind a desk. I wanted to be in a job that had several elements, including being out there on the high seas.

Accidentally, I saw an ad in the paper [for astronauts] back in 1983. I was 34 years old, and I couldn't resist that possibility of being out on the brand-new space frontier. I had some doubts about whether I'd be chosen. I was pretty sure there'd be more qualified people. I was thinking of the traditional model of the astronaut — you know, the test pilot. Anyway, I said, "If I don't apply, I'll never know, and I'll always kick myself." So I applied. I was very fortunate to be chosen as one of the first six Canadian astronauts. 

That changed my life. That was not as much of a metamorphosis as perhaps going into politics later on, but it was a change. I was suddenly going from being a private individual to becoming a very public individual, because the interest in Canada and in our new astronauts was enormous. I did have to get used to the fact that I was a more public person. I was worried about too much intrusiveness, but I was fortunate that, generally, people were considerate about it.

When I made the transition to politics — I've often said this before — people liked me when I was an astronaut. But when I became a politician, it was a totally different ball of wax. They felt, and quite rightfully — Canadians who elect you feel entitled to tell you what they think. Sometimes they don't agree with you. Occasionally, rarely, it can get personal. So the big change there, although I was already a public figure, was the fact you have to grow a bit of a thick skin, because you're going to get criticized.

You know that goes with the territory, although I have to say that with social media today, it's — in some cases — gotten totally toxic. But I've got that thick skin. The secret there is not to grow that so thick that you become insensitive to everything else.

Related: What 8,000 hours flying military jets taught 2 Canadian astronauts

Space.com: I was fortunate enough last month to see some of your artifacts being processed for Ingenium, a coalition of Canadian museums. Can you talk about how that was done?

Garneau: It was [Canadian astronaut] Bob Thirsk who first suggested it to me. I thought this was a very good idea. It's a complex procedure. I called them up and said, 'Look, would you be interested in some artifacts?' A curator came to my house, and I laid everything out there, and they took only some of it. I was very glad to donate it, because it was stuff I was prepared to part with. There's a few things I won't part with, because I want to give them to my family, but they came and chose a few things, and that's the story there.

Space.com: We're speaking around the 40th anniversary of your first mission, STS-41G. And I saw on X [formerly Twitter] that you had a lot of memories. Is there maybe one or two things you really want to be highlighting for that mission?

Garneau: People always ask me that question: "What was the most memorable part of the mission?" And Bob Crippen, my commander on the first mission, used to quip: "The bit between the launch and the landing." It is all true, because every part of it is is a special experience. What stays with you your whole life is looking out the window and seeing planet Earth, because it's an experience that changes you. Perhaps not in a dramatic way, but in a subtle way. You become more conscious of the bigger issues and you begin to focus on those bigger issues once you've seen Earth from space. I think that only became stronger with my two other flights.

Space.com: You were one of the first foreign astronauts on the NASA space shuttle, and of course, the first Canadian on the shuttle. You talked a bit about this in the book, but that experience of having to be a representative right at the beginning of the program, when there's a lot of attention about you. How did you handle that?

Garneau: I did feel the pressure to perform, because I knew that Canada would be looking at at me, and so I really wanted everything to go well. I wanted, to put it bluntly, to make Canada proud. Secondly, I wanted to leave a good impression with NASA, because if I screwed up badly, it would leave NASA with questions about whether it was a good idea to use Canadians as astronauts. This, of course, would have affected my fellow colleagues who were also hoping for their turn to fly into space.

I was the second non-American. Ulf Merbold had flown the year before. He was from Germany. For some of the professional NASA astronauts that were down there, they had been training in some cases for years [without a spaceflight] — in one case, for 19 years. And here was the Canadian arriving at the last second, and was going to take up a seat in the space shuttle. So I felt a little bit of aloofness and perhaps coolness on the part of certain astronauts when I came down there.

We started to do our training. [It was] unlike today where you all integrate together in the same room and you get to know each other, and that's critical in terms of creating bonds. Bob Thirsk [my backup] and I were put in an office in a different building from the rest of the crew and we were sort of segregated, except for the times when we had to be there, to train together with the rest of the crew. So it's not something I spoke about at the time, but it is something that I had to live with.

Space.com: That's changed, though, as you say, right? It's better today than it used to be.

Garneau: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Of course, these days there are no longer payload specialists [responsible for a small set of experiments], as was the case with me. I mean, over the years, there were many payload specialists, including some who were lost, like Christa McAuliffe [aboard space shuttle Challenger in 1986]. Today, I think there's the realization that we're all in this together. We're all taking the same risks, and we're all really focused on the success of the mission. We all have to work together. And I think that that culture is there now, within NASA.

Space.com: It was hard for me to pick a moment or two from your career to talk about, but one thing I did want to highlight was when you got to drive the Canadarm up there. Can you talk a little bit about how true the training was to the actual experience? Also, what your impressions were as you were able to undertake this activity?

Garneau: The training was first class, no question about it, in various different simulators at the NASA Johnson Space Center. Some of them physical, and some simulations where you were controlling the arm virtually and practicing the tasks that that you had to do. If I had to single out one moment that gave me the greatest pride in my three missions, it was the second mission, when I had to capture a free-flying spacecraft called Spartan 207. We had released it a couple of days before, and we had to now recover it and bring back to Earth.

It's different from capturing a payload that's in the payload bay, that's fixed. If you aren't successful, the payload you're trying to grab is not going to go anywhere. But if you make a mistake, trying to grab a free-flying satellite — and remember, you and the orbiter are both moving around the Earth in tandem at 28,000 kilometers per hour [17,400 mph] — if you do it wrongly, there's a potential for you to cause unwanted motion in your spacecraft. Then it's an extremely challenging task to be able to recover after that. I felt that was the moment when I really had to be successful, and it's the moment that worked out. It gave me a huge amount of pride being a Canadian, to operate that Canadarm and to capture a free-flying payload.

Space.com: Was there anything you wanted to highlight from the book or from your career about Canada's contributions in space? 

Garneau: After my three flights, I became president of the CSA. I realized that one of the important roles that I had as president was to make Canadians aware of the fact that space has been a very powerful tool in helping to improve the lives of Canadians, whether it's communication satellites, GPS satellites, weather satellites. We've been pioneers with radar Earth observation and, of course, building robotic arms. We have used space in a way to improve our lives down here. 

Space.com: Among your X posts, I also noticed that you've been with CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen recently. He's also been waiting a long time, and he now is assigned to moon mission Artemis 2. Jenni Gibbons is going to be his backup. Can you talk a little bit about that evolution that Canada has had to get to this point?

Garneau: It's a quantum leap. I started it off as the first Canadian, trying to make a good impression. We had then after that CSA astronauts who flew and did outstanding things, three of them going up to the International Space Station, staying for for about six months each. One of them was commanding it, Chris Hadfield. Several of the Canadians were doing spacewalks and operating the Canadarm. I think that is tangible proof of the fact that Canadians, the astronauts, have proven themselves and are well respected in the international arena — and particularly with NASA.

I think the fact that Jeremy is going to be the first non-American to go as far as the moon and to orbit it, on Artemis 2, is really a testimony to the fact that not only is he viewed as an outstanding astronaut — which he is, and Jenni is [also as] his backup. It's also the fact that Canadians have come a long way since my first flight 40 years ago. So that gives me a very warm feeling of quiet satisfaction that we've come a long way.

A full-size mockup of the space shuttle orbiter that was built as a contractor's showcase model before NASA decided on the spacecraft's final design is heading back on display after more than 25 years in storage.

For the past decade, the City of Downey in California has worked on plans to exhibit the North American Rockwell model after rediscovering its existence in 2012. Nine years later, state lawmakers approved $800,000 to restore the plywood and plastic space shuttle ahead of its display at the city's Columbia Memorial Space Center in Discovery Park.

Then, in May of this year, the city completed a environmental review for the Space Shuttle Exhibit & Education Building Project, giving the go to construct a 29,000-square-foot (2,700 square meters) expansion to the space center. The two-story building will include a dedicated space to exhibit the 122-foot-long by 35-foot-tall (37 by 11 m) original concept model for NASA's winged orbiters, as well as an event space for up to 300 attendees, offices and classrooms.

Named "Inspiration" by the Columbia Memorial Space Center, the model has sat in outdoor storage, divided into segments and covered in plastic tarps, since briefly being exhibited under a temporary tent 12 years ago. Now preparations are being made to move the shuttle's pieces to a facility where it can be reassembled and restored for display.

Related: NASA's space shuttles: Where are they now?

Although only traveling three city blocks, Inspiration's relocation is expected to take two days, Oct. 17 and 18. Public viewing of the move will be available, with details to be announced close to the dates.

Work on Inspiration's new, permanent display home is expected to begin in 2025 and continue through to the next year. An opening date has not been announced. The space center first needs to raise an additional $50 million for the structure's construction and outfitting.

In addition to Inspiration, the plan is for the building to also house temporary exhibits, ranging "from small Mars rover models to space-flown Dragon capsules," according to the city's report.

The Downey exhibit will add a second full-size space shuttle orbiter on display in the Los Angeles area. The California Science Center at Exposition Park is currently constructing the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center on the site, where earlier this year NASA's orbiter Endeavour was mated to the last built-for-flight space shuttle external fuel tank and a pair of flight-worthy solid rocket boosters.

After winning the contract to build the orbiters, North American Rockwell (today, Boeing) used the full-size mockup as a fit check tool for instruments and payloads being built for the space-worthy vehicles. For the first half of the 30-year shuttle program, the model, less one wing and part of its vertical stabilizer (or tail) was used as a public relations tool, but then was put into storage when the plant where it was housed closed in 1999.

The temporary move in 2012 to the Columbia Memorial Space Center and then outdoor storage was to clear its former location for retail development.

The Columbia Memorial Space Center, which was named after NASA's first winged orbiter to launch into space but which was lost with its STS-107 crew while reentering the atmosphere in 2003, was opened in 2009. The museum serves to both preserve the aerospace history of the Downey area while engaging a new generation in science, technology and engineering through hands-on exhibits.

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Canada's famous robotic space arm just made a cameo on the silver screen.

The iconic Canadarm briefly appears in the new film "Deadpool & Wolverine" — but not in space as you might expect. Instead, the space shuttle hardware shows up in a scene on the ground next to an unnamed villain, and bearing a big magnet on one of its ends. We won't talk about why the arm is there because, you know, spoilers. But you can check the space arm in action quickly in the trailer.

The maple-leaf-festooned Easter egg of Canada's space program isn't the film's only connection to the country known for poutine and hockey: Ryan Reynolds, who co-stars as Deadpool, hails from Vancouver, British Columbia.

Canadarm is the centerpiece of Canada's contributions to human spaceflight. The arm first flew on the second flight of the space shuttle, STS-2, in 1981. Its original role was to deploy and capture satellites in space, and to help with spacewalks. 

Related: X-Men movies in order: Chronological & release

Today, there are three robot generations: the retired Canadarm, Canadarm2 on the International Space Station (ISS), and Canadarm3, which is expected to support NASA's Gateway station in orbit around the moon for Artemis program missions. 

Most surviving Canadarms are on the ground, but one is still at the ISS as a modified "Enhanced ISS Boom Assembly" to extend the reach of Canadarm2 when necessary. (It doesn't appear to have been used in years, but backups are always great.)

Seats on NASA missions for Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronauts come courtesy of the Canadarm series' robotic powers, as the robotics are provided in exchange for seats. Over the years, the Canadarms have done noteworthy things such as scanning the space shuttle's belly for broken tiles, helping to build the ISS, participating in a dramatic spacewalk to repair a torn solar wing on the ISS, and picking up the Hubble Space Telescope, among other milestones.

Canadian robotic arms come from generations of telescoping tube technology seen in examples such as satellite extendable antennas and the Apollo program's lunar lander's legs, according to "Canadarm and Collaboration" (Elizabeth Howell, ECW Press, 2020.) 

The space arm was originally developed by Spar Aerospace, with support from Canada's National Research Council (the government entity responsible for astronaut training before the CSA was formed in 1989). Today, the Canadarm series is funded by CSA and managed by the company MDA Space (formerly MDA), which brought the space robotics division of Spar in 1999, according to the National Post.

Pathfinder is back in its "space," three and a half years after it "landed" on Earth.

An early mockup of NASA's now-retired winged orbiters, Pathfinder was returned to its position atop a space shuttle propulsion "stack" at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama on Wednesday morning (Aug. 28). The lift signaled that a multi-million-dollar restoration effort is nearing completion.

"Returning Pathfinder to the shuttle stack after an extensive restoration process is a major milestone for us," Kimberly Robinson, CEO and executive director of the Space & Rocket Center, said in a statement provided to collectSPACE. "We are so fortunate to have this emblem of a program that for 30 years and 135 flights helped launch telescopes and satellites and build the International Space Station."

Workers using two heavy-lift cranes raised Pathfinder — absent its wings and main engines — 80 feet (24 meters) off the ground to its mount atop an external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters. The horizontal display, which is at a 10-degree angle so Pathfinder appears to be climbing skyward, is one of only two such full-stack displays in the world; the other, at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, features space shuttle Endeavour.

Pathfinder's wings are set to be installed on Thursday, followed by its engines on Friday, weather permitting. In total, the cranes will have lifted more than 143 tons to reassemble the orbiter atop its stack.

Related: NASA's space shuttles: Where are they now?

Pathfinder was originally built in 1977 to verify that NASA's ground support equipment was ready to receive the flight-worthy spacecraft. Comprised of a steel airframe covered in wood panels, it lacked the details and markings that would later make the flown vehicles iconic.

After its use by NASA, Pathfinder was modified by the America-Japan Society so that it looked more like the orbiters that had subsequently launched into space. Pathfinder went on display as part of the "Great Space Shuttle Exposition" in Tokyo from 1983 to 1984, before finding a permanent home at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, home to U.S. Space Camp, in May 1988.

Pathfinder was mated with the first propulsion test article for the shuttle's external tank and two prototype solid rocket boosters. It was also outfitted with engine nozzles, two of which were were flight hardware. Nozzle 2005 flew on the first five flights of the space shuttle Columbia, and nozzle 2020 was used on Challenger's fifth through ninth launches. (The third nozzle was a development unit.)

In February 2021, funded in part by a $500,000 Save America's Treasures grant, the rocket center began work on the restoration of Pathfinder and its Shuttle Plaza display. The orbiter was lowered to the ground and stripped to just its original red airframe, while work got underway to repair and repaint the tank and boosters.

Pathfinder was returned to its original length — 121 feet (37 m) from its nose to vertical stabilizer tip — after being truncated for its display in Japan. Its frame was reinforced with cold-formed steel to accommodate 516 3D-printed panels that in turn were painted, adding the vehicle's exterior details.

"It is the perfect representation of our rich history," said Robinson. "The 3D-printed panels that now cover the orbiter merge that history with technologies of today, creating a full circle story we're proud to tell."

Pathfinder was reattached to its external tank using eight 0.625-inch (1.6 centimeters) bolts and nuts at the front and two 2.5-inch diameter (6.3 cm) bolts, nuts and washers at the rear. Teflon bearings were used on the rear attachments to ease movement. Each wing will require 32 fasteners, while each of the engine nozzles will use 80.

Pathfinder's lift was the last remaining piece needed to restore the rocket center's "spaceline" after work was completed to repair, repaint and re-stand up the historic boosters in the center's rocket park. Several more months of work are needed before Shuttle Plaza will reopen. A ribbon cutting is tentatively planned for this fall.

Click through to collectSPACE to see video of Pathfinder being lifted atop its external tank and boosters at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Alabama.

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Two fatal spaceflight disasters influenced NASA's thinking on how the Starliner astronauts should return home.

NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who launched to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard Boeing's Starliner spacecraft on June 5, will now return to Earth no earlier than February 2025 aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule, rather than journey home on Starliner.

The first crewed Starliner flight was initially billed as an eight-day mission to the ISS. But its stay in orbit has been extended numerous times due to concerns surrounding the spacecraft's thrusters. The eventual decision to send Williams and Wilmore home on the SpaceX Crew-9 mission, which NASA announced over the weekend, was informed by lessons from the agency's two space shuttle disasters.

Asked in a press conference on Saturday (Aug. 24) if the Challenger and Columbia accidents influenced his personal decision, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson confirmed to reporters that this was indeed the case.

Related: Space shuttle Challenger and the disaster that changed NASA forever

"It has affected the decision today by this collective group and all of those that participated in the Flight Test Readiness Review this morning," Nelson said. "It is trying to turn around the culture that first led to the loss of Challenger and then led to the loss of Columbia, where obvious mistakes were not being brought forth."

The Columbia disaster occurred on Feb. 1, 2003, when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart during atmospheric reentry. That was determined to be caused by a large piece of foam falling from the shuttle's external tank during launch, damaging the orbiter's wing. That followed the catastrophic launch failure of the space shuttle Challenger in January 1986. Both incidents caused the loss of all crew onboard, killing 14 astronauts in total.

Nelson noted how engineers who raised concerns over components and launching in very cold weather were ignored ahead of the Challenger launch. For Columbia, several people within NASA pushed to obtain pictures of the damaged wing in orbit, but reentry proceeded without further inspection.

"So NASA, ever since, has tried very hard to bring about an atmosphere in which people are encouraged to step forward and speak their mind, and I think, right, today is a good example of that," Nelson said.

NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free, another panel member for Saturday's press conference, noted that more work was needed to understand the issue with Starliner's thrusters.

Free said that, "uncertainty remains in our understanding of the physics going on in the thrusters. And still, we still have some work to do."

Nelson, later asked if politics played a role in NASA's decision, reiterated the cases of Challenger and Columbia.

"I can tell you unequivocally, from a personal standpoint, that politics has not played any part in this decision," Nelson said. 

"What I said earlier about Challenger and Columbia and the lessons learned and what we've tried to change in a culture, in order that safety is our North Star, is what we are trying to do." 

"In a very hostile environment in which, if you make a mistake, it's very unforgiving," Nelson added.

The Crew-9 launch will be modified to make room for the Starliner astronauts to allow them to return home early next year; the Dragon will fly up with just two astronauts next month instead of the usual four. Meanwhile, NASA and Boeing will work to bring the uncrewed Starliner back to Earth sometime in September, targeting a landing at White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico.

Update for 11 p.m. ET on Aug. 27: SpaceX has now delayed the Polaris Dawn launch until no earlier than Aug. 30 due to a helium leak and bad weather. Read our delay stories here and here.

Two women astronauts will set a spaceflight record next week, if all goes according to plan. 

The Polaris Dawn mission is scheduled to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than Aug. 27. It aims to perform the first-ever private spacewalk and to fly at a higher altitude above Earth than any crewed spacecraft since the Apollo era, at about 870 miles (1,400 kilometers). The mission is funded and commanded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, who also funded and commanded the private Inspiration4 orbital mission in 2021.

Polaris Dawn's four-person crew includes female mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, both of whom are SpaceX engineers, as well as male pilot Scott "Kidd" Poteet. The highest-flying woman before Gillis and Menon was NASA astronaut Kathryn Sullivan, who reached 386 miles (621 km) on the STS-31 mission during the space shuttle program, according to NASA and space statistics tracker Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Institute of Astrophysics.

STS-31's extreme altitude was a result of its main goal: deploying the Hubble Space Telescope, a top-tier space observatory still active today thanks to the efforts of spacewalking astronauts on five different servicing missions. On board STS-31 were five astronauts, including Sullivan, who reached space just seven years after NASA flew its first woman astronaut (Sally Ride, in June 1983).

The five Hubble servicing missions, which flew between 1993 and 2009, reached lower altitudes than STS-31. While a few crewed missions ranged farther into space than Hubble's height, all of those were performed by male-only crews.

Related: SpaceX Polaris Dawn crew lands at launch site ahead of 1st-ever private spacewalk mission (photos, video)

The highest mission in Earth orbit featured NASA astronauts Dick Gordon and Pete Conrad, aboard Gemini 11 in September 1966. They reached a pre-Apollo altitude record of 850 miles (1,368 km), which Polaris Dawn aims to beat.

The historic Apollo program missions carried only male astronauts. Apollo 8, which launched in December 1968, was the first of these flights to reach the moon. It was followed by Apollos 10 through 17, which flew from 1969 to 1972. 

The farthest-ranging of the group was Apollo 13, which reached a distance of 248,655 miles (400,171 km) from our planet in April 1970. Its orbit was slightly different than the others; its planned lunar landing was foiled by an explosion in the mission's service module two days into the flight. NASA and the Apollo 13 astronauts troubleshot the potentially catastrophic issue, slingshotting the spacecraft around the moon and returning to Earth safe and sound on April 17, 1970.

Former NASA astronaut Jon McBride, who was the pilot on the first mission to launch seven people into space, has died at the age of 80.

McBride's death on Wednesday (Aug. 7) was confirmed to collectSPACE.com by NASA after the space agency heard from his family.

A member of the "TFNG" ("Thirty-Five New Guys"), NASA's first group of space shuttle astronauts selected in 1978, McBride's first and only spaceflight was as pilot of the space shuttle Challenger's sixth flight into space on Oct. 5, 1984.

"We lifted off, started accelerating, and it was just — wow," said McBride in a NASA oral history interview in 2012. "Simulators are good, but this is just something else, and you get up to 3Gs [three times the force of gravity] and then it's a whole different place in your life. Not that I hadn't had 3Gs before; I'd [just] never had them through my chest for three minutes."

McBride's six crewmates included STS-41G commander Bob Crippen, who three years earlier had been pilot on the first flight of the space shuttle program; mission specialists Kathy Sullivan, Sally Ride and David Leestma; and payload specialists Paul Scully-Power and Marc Garneau.

The eight-day mission was the first to fly two women (including Ride, who on a previous Challenger flight had become the first American woman in space). It was also the first to see a U.S. woman perform a spacewalk (Sullivan) and the first flights of Australian (Scully-Power) and Canadian (Garneau) crew members.

McBride and his crewmates deployed the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS), which recorded the energy emitted by the sun and how much bounced off Earth's atmosphere into space, and operated Shuttle Imaging Radar-B (SIR-B), which collected radar images of our planet from several different angles.

McBride and his crew's activities were documented using a large-format 70mm camera and featured in the 1985 IMAX documentary "The Dream is Alive."

Related: NASA's space shuttle program in pictures: A tribute

On Oct. 13, 1984, Crippen and McBride brought Challenger back to Earth, landing the space shuttle for only the second time at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"I'm not trying to diminish the entry and the landing, but if you can fly airplanes on and off of aircraft carriers and do all the things that we do and you follow the procedures, flying the space shuttle is pretty easy after a few thousand hours of practice in it and simulators and the shuttle training airplanes," said McBride. "Golly, it was nice to be back on Earth and have a perfect landing and rollout on time and everybody's happy. We did all of our mission objectives. But flying the space shuttle is probably one of the easier airplanes I've ever flown."

As one of the five first-time fliers on the mission, McBride logged 8 days, 5 hours, 23 minutes and 33 seconds in space while traveling 3.3 million miles (5.3 million kilometers) during 133 trips around the planet. He was the 156th person to fly into space and 149th to orbit Earth, according to the Association of Space Explorers' Registry of Space Travelers.

Jon Andrew McBride was born on Aug. 14, 1943 in Charleston, West Virginia, but considered Beckley to be his hometown. He attended West Virginia University from 1960 to 1964 and received a Bachelor of Science in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1971.

In 1965, McBride reported to Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida for naval aviation training and, after earning his wings, was assigned as a naval aviator to Fighter Squadron 101 at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia. He was later assigned to Fighter Squadrons 41, 11 and 103, and flew 64 combat missions while deployed to Southeast Asia.

McBride then attended the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, prior to reporting as a maintenance officer and Sidewinder project officer to Air Test and Development Squadron Four at Point Mugu, California. It was while serving in this position that McBride was selected by NASA for its astronaut corps.

"Six o'clock in the morning exactly, which would have been eight o'clock in Houston, I heard the phone ringing," said McBride. "I was barely awake when I picked up the phone."

The phone call was from George Abbey, then NASA's director of flight operations, informing McBride he had been chosen.

"Wow! I was awake now. I felt like I levitated about three feet off the bed," McBride recalled.

As of 1979, McBride had flown more than 40 different types of military and civilian aircraft and piloted the Navy "Spirit of '76" bicentennial-painted F-4J "Phantom in various air shows from 1976 to 1978. He logged more than 8,800 hours flying time, including 4,700 hours in jet aircraft.

Prior to his own spaceflight, McBride was the lead chase pilot for STS-1, the first flight of the space shuttle Columbia, in 1981.

"It was high overhead, 40,000 feet [12,200 meters], when John and Bob came out of orbit and made that first landing at Edwards, and we were joined up with them about 30,000 feet [9,150 m] or so. We were there primarily — they called us safety chase, but I think the best thing that came out of the whole rendezvous and fly-down was that we got some good photography," said McBride. "Our primary job was to scan the shuttle as it came out of orbit, because we'd never done it before, and if there's hydraulic leaks or missing parts of their control system, we could tell them. I don't know how much good it would have done, what they would have done, but, fortunately, there was no problem."

McBride also worked on certifying flight software in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL) at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, as well as served as capcom (capsule communicator) in Mission Control for STS-5, STS-6 and STS-7. He also managed the Flight Data File (FDF) and helped develop orbital rendezvous procedures.

After landing on STS-41G, McBride was named commander of STS-61E, leading a crew of six on a planned nine-day flight aboard Columbia. The astronomy-dedicated mission was targeted for launch on March 6, 1986, but was canceled in the wake of the loss of space shuttle Challenger and its STS-51L crew in January of that year. (The mission's ASTRO-1 payload was later flown on STS-35 in 1990.)

In July 1987, McBride was transferred to NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. to serve as Assistant Administrator for Congressional Relations. He held this position, overseeing NASA's communications with Congress, through March 1989, when he retired from NASA and the Navy (the latter with the rank of captain).

McBride was president and chief executive officer of Flying Eagle Corporation in Lewisburg, West Virginia and an executive associate for R.L. Bliss & Associates, Inc. in Charleston, before entering the race for Governor of West Virginia in 1996. He lost the Republican nomination to Cecil Underwood.

In 2005, McBride joined the management at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, overseeing the daily "Astronaut Encounter" and "Dine With an Astronaut" educational programs. McBride also advised on the landing sequence for the complex's $60 million "Shuttle Launch Experience" ride. He retired in 2020.

"We are deeply saddened by the passing of Captain Jon McBride, an American hero and veteran NASA astronaut," read a statement from the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. "Jon inspired countless guests, crewmembers and people during his time working at the visitor complex and throughout his career."

For his service to the nation's space program, McBride was awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal and was bestowed with three honorary doctorates from West Virginia University (1985), the University of Charleston (1987) and West Virginia Institute of Technology (1987).

On Sept. 23, 2011, the NASA Independent Verification and Validation Facility (IV&V) in Fairmont, West Virginia named a NASA software laboratory the "Jon McBride Software Testing and Research Laboratory," or JSTAR. The lab supports end-to-end testing on mission flight software.

McBride was married to the former Brenda Lou Stewart in 1966 and they had three children. He and Brenda divorced in 1986. McBride then married the former Sharon Lynn White in 1988. He is preceded in death by his eldest son, Richard McBride; one of his eight grandchildren, Ryan; and his STS-41G crewmate Sally Ride.

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For the past 25 years, NASA's flagship Chandra X-ray Observatory has recorded X-ray emissions from exploded stars, supermassive black holes, galaxy clusters and other exotic, high-energy pockets of our universe, allowing scientists around the world to piece together the structure and history of our cosmos.

As part of the telescope's anniversary celebrations this week, the space agency released a behind-the-scenes look at the work it takes to keep the $1.5 billion spacecraft flying in space, and of its workforce of engineers, technicians, analysts and designers, many of whom have been involved in the mission since its inception decades ago.

The Chandra telescope was first proposed to NASA in 1976, and funding and preliminary work began a year later. The endeavor was led by the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Massachusetts, which is also now responsible for the day-to-day operations of the telescope. The telescope launched into space aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1999 and was placed into an orbit that took it one-third of the way to the moon. From its vantage point, Chandra has helped astronomers study mysteries they didn't even know existed when it was being built, including the intricacies of exoplanets and dark energy.

"How much technology from 1999 is still in use today?" Douglas Swartz, a Chandra researcher, said in a recent NASA statement. "We don't use the same camera equipment, computers, or phones from that era. But one technological success – Chandra – is still going strong, and still so powerful that it can read a stop sign from 12 miles away."

Related: Happy 25th anniversary, Chandra! NASA celebrates with 25 breathtaking images from flagship X-ray observatory

The mission, which was initially designed to last five years and then extended to at least 10, still has a decade of life left. The lasting value is no accident, according to the mission team, which automated aspects of the observatory to improve its efficiency. After Chandra's budget was reduced in 1992, the mission was dramatically restructured to remove the planned servicing and upgrades by visiting astronauts while minimizing changes to its science output. "There was a lot of excitement and a lot of challenges — but we met them and conquered them," project engineer David Hood, who joined the Chandra development effort in 1988, said in the statement.

"The field of high-powered X-ray astronomy was still so relatively young, it wasn't just a matter of building a revolutionary observatory," Martin Weisskopf, who led Chandra scientific development starting in the late 1970s, said in the statement. "First, we had to build the tools necessary to test, analyze, and refine the hardware."

Marshall renovated and expanded its X-ray Calibration Facility in Alabama to accommodate Chandra's instruments and test key hardware in a space-like environment — efforts that, years later, paved the way for testing the James Webb Space Telescope, which was designed as a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. 

The mission team now closely monitors the telescope's position in orbit and efficiency of its key instruments, like thermal insulation on its exterior that has unsurprisingly degraded over time thanks to the harsh space environment, preventing the telescope from staring in one direction for too long. While operating the telescope has gotten more complicated, scientists insist observational efficiency has remained as high as it was at the mission's start.

"Chandra's still a workhorse, but one that needs gentler handling," Jodi Turk, a thermal analyst at the Marshall Space Flight Center, said in the statement.

The 25th anniversary of the iconic telescope is bittersweet for many astronomers, who worry the telescope will be shut down prematurely after NASA in its fiscal year 2025 budget proposal, which was released in March, slashed Chandra's funding by 40 percent due to budget pressures — from $68.3 million in 2023 to $41.1 million for next year, and with further drops after 2026 that reduce its funding to just $5.2 million by 2029. The loss of the Chandra telescope would be an "extinction-level" event for X-ray astronomy in the U.S., with no other telescope that mirrors or surpasses Chandra's capabilities. Over a 100 astronomers continue to urge NASA to reconsider its decision via a "Save Chandra" coalition, arguing that the observatory has had stable operational costs over the past decades and still has a decade of life left.

Yesterday (July 23), a NASA committee tasked with exploring ways to reduce operational costs for Chandra concluded there isn't a way to continue operating the observatory at the reduced funding proposed by NASA, SpaceNews reported. The committee also outlined three options that would keep Chandra running with decreased capabilities, such as limiting its observing programs to those that have synergies with other telescopes, but all three possibilities would require budgets higher than what NASA has proposed.

NASA is currently reviewing these options and aims to announce its plans for changes to Chandra in mid-September.

Joe Engle, the first astronaut to fly in space aboard two different winged vehicles, has died at the age of 91.

Engle's death on Wednesday (July 10) was announced in a note from his family shared publicly on Facebook.

"Blessed with natural piloting skills, General Joe, as he was known to many, was at his happiest in any cockpit," read the note. "He lived a fulfilled life as a proud American, U.S. Air Force pilot, astronaut and Kansas Jayhawk. His passing leaves a tremendous loss in our hearts."

Engle's first flight into space preceded him becoming a NASA astronaut by 10 months. As a test pilot in a joint U.S. Air Force and NASA-run research program, Engle flew the X-15 rocket plane above 50 miles (80 kilometers), qualifying him for his astronaut wings, on June 29, 1965.

"I honestly recall that more important than going over the 50 miles was getting as close to [the] planned altitude profile as possible, and I think the fact that it came out very, very close meant more to me, really, than the fact that I'd gone over 50 miles," said Engle in a 2004 NASA oral history.

Engle repeated the feat two more times out of his 16 total flights aboard the X-15 before being selected for NASA's fifth group of astronauts in April 1966.

His second winged ride into space was on the space shuttle Columbia.

On Nov. 12, 1981, Engle launched with Richard "Dick" Truly on STS-2, the second mission of the Space Transportation System. The mission demonstrated that the space shuttle orbiter was reusable and was the first to "fly" the Canadarm remote manipulator system, or robotic arm.

"We launched and went through the vibrations of launch, which was very impressive," said Engle at a 35th anniversary celebration of his STS-2 flight. "And very loud and noisy — very unspacey, by the way — it was like an old pickup truck with a lot of loose tools in the back."

Truly and Engle also tested the vehicle's orbital maneuvering system engines, performed several science experiments, spoke live with President Ronald Reagan and were awakened by the Muppets ("Pigs in Space"). The planned five-day flight was then cut short due a failed fuel cell.

On Nov. 14, 1981, with Engle at the controls, Columbia touched down at Edwards Air Force Base using the same dry lakebed in southern California where he earlier landed the X-15.

Related: NASA's space shuttle: The first reusable spacecraft

Four years later, Engle commanded his fifth and last spaceflight (his second launch into orbit), NASA's STS-51I mission aboard the space shuttle Discovery. Flying with pilot Dick Covey and mission specialists James "Ox" van Hoften, Mike Lounge and Bill Fisher, Engle and his crewmates deployed three commercial communications satellites and retrieved and repaired another satellite that was launched on an earlier space shuttle mission.

The week-long mission concluded with Engle landing Discovery at Edwards Air Force Base.

In total, Engle logged nine days, 8 hours and 30 minutes while circling Earth 149 times. He is recorded as the sixth person to fly a suborbital flight and 104th to enter orbit in the Association of Space Explorers' Registry of Space Travelers.

Joe Henry Engle was born on Aug. 26, 1932 in Chapman, Kansas. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Kansas in 1955 and was commissioned with the Air Force through the school's Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps.

Engle earned his pilot wings in 1958 and and was assigned to fly F-100 Super Sabre jets for the 474th Fighter Day Squadron and, later, the 309th Tactical Fighter Squadron at George Air Force Base in California. Recommended by Chuck Yeager for the U.S Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, Engle graduated in 1961 and then, again at the urging of Yeager, joined the third class at the Aerospace Research Pilot School.

"I learned later that Chuck's philosophy was that the good pilots are the ones who have the most flying, who go after flying the hardest and take it serious, and I think that that probably influenced him to support and recommend me for the test pilot school more than anything else," said Engle.

Prior to flying the X-15, Engle applied for NASA's third group of astronauts, but was diverted by the Air Force to fly the rocket plane.

As a NASA astronaut, Engle first served on the crew of 2TV-1, a vacuum chamber test of the Apollo command module. For eight days, Engle, together with astronauts Joseph Kerwin and Vance Brand, lived inside the sealed capsule, simulating a spaceflight.

Related: The Apollo Program: How NASA sent astronauts to the moon

Engle was then assigned as a support crew member for Apollo 10, prior to being named the backup lunar module pilot for the 1971 Apollo 14 mission. This put him in line to land on the moon on Apollo 17, but he was replaced by geologist Harrison "Jack" Schmitt due to pressure to fly a scientist before the lunar landing program ended.

"Of course, that's what the lunar missions were all about [science], so it was a perfectly legitimate rationale," said Engle. "I think [the] first choice would have been to leave the crew intact, but I think that there was a great deal of pressure [to fly Schmitt], and understandably so."

Engle was reassigned to the shuttle program, where he was paired with his future STS-2 crewmate, Truly, to be one of two teams that demonstrated the orbiter's ability to land like a plane as part of a series of approach and landing tests. Engle and Truly flew one "captive" flight with the prototype Enterprise remaining attached to the top of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and two "free" flights, separating at altitude from the modified 747 jetliner to then touch down at Edwards.

"A lot of the airplane systems had to be developed because the shuttle wasn't really an airplane, but you had to go through the airplane part of the shuttle to get it on the ground, the part where everybody could see you come back and land," said Engle in 2016. "And that was the important part."

Between his first and second space shuttle missions, Engle served as deputy associate administrator for human spaceflight at NASA Headquarters from March to December 1982.

Engle retired from NASA on Nov. 28, 1986. Two days later, he resigned from the Air Force and on Dec. 1 was promoted to the rank of major general. Engle's last active-duty military assignment was as the Air National Guard Assistant to the Commander in Chief for U.S. Space Command and North American Air Defense Command headquartered at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. In total, Engle logged more than 14,700 flight hours, 9,900 in jets — while flying more than 185 different types of aircraft, including 38 different fighter and attack aircraft.

For his service to the U.S. space program, Engle was awarded U.S. Air Force and NASA astronaut wings, Air Force and NASA distinguished service medals, two NASA spaceflight medals and a NASA exceptional service medal, among other honors. He was a recipient of the Dr. Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy, the Robert J. Collier Trophy and the Iven C. Kincheloe Prize, the latter for his role in the space shuttle approach and landing test program.

Engle was added to the Aerospace Walk of Honor in Lancaster, California in 1992 and was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio, and U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, both in 2001. In 2014, he was enshrined in the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum in California.

In 2021, the Astronaut Joe Engle Archive Collection debuted at the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) Aviation Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, based on a donation of his archives from the year before.

Engle was preceded in death by his STS-2 crewmate, Truly, in February of this year. With Engle's death, all 12 pilots to fly the X-15 are now deceased.

Engle was first married to Mary Catherine Lawrence, with whom he had two children and one stepchild. He is survived by his widow, Jeanie Carter Engle.

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The commander of the ill-fated flight of space shuttle Challenger is being remembered 40 years after his first spaceflight with a commercial spacecraft bearing his name.

NASA astronaut Francis R. "Dick" Scobee, who flew twice on Challenger — first as its pilot in 1984 and then as commander two years later — is the namesake for Northrop Grumman's 21st cargo vehicle.

"For every commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station, we name our Cygnus spacecraft after a pioneer in human spaceflight. Today, it is my honor to announce the naming of the Cygnus cargo spacecraft that will be used in the upcoming NG-21 mission to the International Space Station for Francis Richard Scobee, former astronaut, pilot and engineer," said Brandon White, vice president and general manager of tactical space systems at Northrop Grumman, in a video statement released by the company on Monday (July 1).

"We are privileged to honor Dick Scobee's legacy and recognize his achievements as a pioneer who contributed so much to human spaceflight and our collective reach to explore space," said White. 

Selected to be an astronaut in 1978 with NASA's first group of shuttle trainees, Scobee logged nearly seven days as the pilot of STS-41C, a mission that featured the first repair of a satellite in Earth orbit. Scobee came to NASA from the U.S. Air Force, where he served as a combat aviator in the Vietnam War and a test pilot for the Boeing 747 jetliner, the X-24B lifting body and C-5 Galaxy cargo plane. 

Related: Space shuttle Challenger and the disaster that changed NASA forever

On Jan. 28, 1986, Scobee and his six STS-51L crewmates were killed when Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its 10th mission, the result of a failed seal in one of the spacecraft's two solid rocket boosters. (In 2018, Northrop Grumman acquired the company that produced Challenger's boosters, as well as all of the solid rocket motors that were used throughout the 30-year space shuttle program.)

Scobee was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2004. His memory is further kept alive by the Challenger Center, an educational organization established by the families of the STS-51L crew. Scobee's widow, June Scobee Rodgers, served as the center's founding chair.

"Dick's legacy continues to inspire generations of aspiring pilots, engineers and students, who are driven to test the boundaries of human spaceflight technology and space exploration," said Quinn Duffy, an engineer at Northrop Grumman.

The "S.S. Francis R. 'Dick' Scobee" is is targeted to launch to the space station in early August. It will be the second Cygnus to fly on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as Northrop Grumman transitions its Antares rocket from using Russian-built engines to U.S.-based hardware developed with Firefly Aerospace.

The NG-21 Cygnus will carry food, supplies and equipment to the space station, including a bioreactor to demonstrate the production of blood and immune stem cells and an investigation into vascularized liver tissue. The mission will also fly several test articles to observe water flow in microgravity as part of a new NASA "STEMonstration" educational outreach payload.

The S.S. Francis R. "Dick" Scobee is the second Cygnus spacecraft that Northrop Grumman has named for a member of the fallen STS-51L crew. Mission specialist Ellison Onizuka, who became the first Asian American to launch into space on his first flight in 1985, was similarly honored with the naming of the NG-16 spacecraft.

Other Cygnus namesakes have included company executive J.R. Thompson, Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) candidate Robert Lawrence, NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson and astronauts David Low, Gordon Fullerton, Janice Voss, Deke Slayton, Rick Husband, Alan Poindexter, John Glenn, Gene Cernan, John Young, Roger Chaffee, Alan Bean, Kalpana Chawla, Piers Sellers, Sally Ride and Laurel Clark.

The most recent Cygnus, the S.S. Patricia "Patty" Hilliard Robertson, named for an astronaut who was the victim of a plane crash before she could launch into space, has been at the station since January. It is scheduled to be released from the orbiting complex on July 12 to proceed to a destructive re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

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This year's U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame induction ceremony was also a reunion of sorts, as the two honorees took to the stage under the spacecraft on which they once crossed paths.

NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida hosted the ceremony under its display of the retired space shuttle Atlantis on Saturday (June 1). A full house of former astronauts, space program officials and the public were there to see David Hilmers and Marsha Ivins be added to the hall's ranks.

"We're here to honor two distinguished space explorers, who each have outstanding careers and have made incredibly significant contributions to NASA and the world," said John Zarella, a former CNN space correspondent who served as the master of ceremonies. "Together they comprise the 25th class of astronauts to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, bringing the total number of astronauts in this prestigious society to 109."

Related: NASA's space shuttle program in pictures: A tribute

Although they did not fly together — Hilmers and Ivins were chosen four years apart to become astronauts — they were both at NASA when the agency's fourth winged orbiter made its maiden flight.

"It's particularly gratifying that I'm so honored below Atlantis. I was on board Atlantis when it blasted into the sky for the very first time on a beautiful October day in 1985," said Hilmers, who made the first of his four flights as an STS-51J mission specialist. "When we got out to the [launch] pad, the "Cape Crusaders" and Marsha was there and she helped strap us in and get into our survival vests, and get into our seats."

"It is a privilege, really, to share a stage with someone I consider one of the finest human beings on or off the planet," said Ivins, addressing Hilmers before turning her attention to Atlantis and the audience seated beneath it. "If you haven't, please look up and acknowledge this piece of of human history that you are sitting under."

Hilmers also paid tribute to Atlantis in his remarks.

"Although she's retired, she continues to be on duty, giving many thousands of visitors the opportunity to see what it was like to be on board," he said. "Like Atlantis, I too retired from active duty with NASA and started a new mission. My path took me down in an entirely different direction, and this is actually the first time I've returned to the Kennedy Space Center for over three decades."

Welcoming Hilmers and Ivins into the Hall of Fame was one of their crewmates: Norm Thagard, who flew with Hilmers on STS-42 in 1992 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2004, and John Grunsfeld, who launched with Ivins on STS-81 in 1997 and was enshrined in 2015.

"My original thought was, this is going to be one of the most difficult things I ever did, because Colonel, Dr. David C. Hilmers is a pretty incredible individual," said Thagard. "My concern was no matter how convincing I might try to be, those of you who don't know Dave would say 'you're exaggerating.' The easy part is I don't have to exaggerate because what I'm going to tell you is pretty incredible in its own right."

Half of Hilmers' missions were flown in service to the Department of Defense. Both STS-51J and STS-36, the latter in 1990, launched on Atlantis with payloads that remain classified to this day. Hilmers' other two flights were on shuttle Discovery, including STS-26 in 1988, NASA's "return to flight" after the Challenger tragedy in 1986; and STS-42, which was focused on the effects of microgravity on a variety of types of life.

After leaving NASA in 1992, Hilmers received his Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree and a second Master's degree in public health. He is is currently a professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and, in addition to his volunteer work in disaster relief and low-resource countries, Hilmers has been helping NASA determine what the requirements for medical expertise will be on missions to the moon and Mars.

Related: Sending astronauts to Mars by 2040 is 'an audacious goal' but NASA is trying anyway

Ivins left an equally impressive mark on NASA, said Grunsfeld, though she might be the last to acknowledge it.

"Marsha is not an attention seeker. In fact, when [the call came] to announce that she was selected into the Astronaut Hall of Fame, I think she had some reticence about this whole event," Grunsfeld said. "[Yet] Marsha, not wanting to be in in the limelight, still helped push NASA forward."

"All of us who flew on the space shuttle owe her a debt of gratitude for work that she did," he said.

Ivins' first flight into space was the first of her two on space shuttle Columbia. On STS-32 in 1990, she and her crewmates retrieved the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), a school bus-sized free-floating materials science platform. Four years later on STS-62, she and her four crewmates continued to study the effects of microgravity on materials sciences and spaceflight technologies.

Ivins' three other missions were aboard Atlantis, making her one of the orbiter's three most frequent fliers. On STS-46 in 1992, she helped with the first attempted deploy of the Tethered Satellite System. On STS-81 in 1997, Ivins visited Mir on the fifth shuttle mission to dock with the Russian space station. Finally, on STS-98 in 2001, Ivins helped to install the U.S. "Destiny" laboratory for the International Space Station and brought supplies for the orbiting complex's first resident crew.

Since leaving the agency, Ivins served as a consultant on "A Beautiful Planet," the last IMAX documentary to be shot in space, and supported proposal work on a human lunar landing vehicle. Today she is the director of human systems integration at Sophic Synergistics, a Houston-based design consulting firm, which supports human space exploration endeavors.

As with past inductee classes, Hilmers and Ivins were selected by a committee of Astronaut Hall of Fame members, former NASA officials, historians and journalists. The process is administered by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.

To be eligible for nomination, an astronaut must have made his or her first flight at least 15 years before the induction. Candidates must be U.S. citizens and either a NASA trained space shuttle commander pilot, mission specialist, or an International Space Station commander or flight engineer who has orbited Earth at least once and whose last day eligible for a flight assignment as a NASA astronaut was at least five years ago.

Saturday's ceremony came to a close with the reveal of the glass-etchings that will represent Hilmers and Ivins.

The plaques, which bear Hilmers' and Ivins' likenesses, as well as mission patches from their respective spaceflights, will be displayed in the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, which since 2016 has been part of the Heroes & Legends attraction at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

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The handwritten journal pages of Israel's first astronaut have been added to the country's national library in Jerusalem, more than 20 years after they were found among the debris from the NASA tragedy that claimed his life.

Ilan Ramon wrote most of the diary while he was in orbit aboard the space shuttle Columbia, serving as an STS-107 payload specialist on the winged spacecraft's last, ill-fated flight. The found pages document Ramon's day-to-day life in space, from his hygiene routine to the research he performed on behalf of NASA and his home nation.

Also included were his notes on the Jewish practices that he was to demonstrate from high above Earth.

"Identified among the restored pages was the Friday night blessing over wine, with Ramon's annotations. Apparently aware he was to broadcast the 'Kiddush' live from space, Ramon wanted to make sure he did not forget a single word," read a release issued by the National Library of Israel on Wednesday (May 29).

Related: Columbia shuttle disaster: What happened and what NASA learned

After 16 days circling the planet, Ramon and his six STS-107 crewmates were lost on the morning of Feb. 1, 2003, when Columbia broke apart during its reentry into Earth's atmosphere. 

A subsequent investigation found that a segment of foam that had come loose from the shuttle's external fuel tank during launch struck the orbiter's left wing and left a gaping hole in its leading edge. As the vehicle descended back to Earth, hot plasma flowed through the hole into Columbia, weakening its structural integrity. The stresses of plunging back into the atmosphere tore the shuttle to pieces.

The tattered and stained Ramon diary pages were discovered among the 84,000 fragments that were spread across East Texas.

"Researchers believe that the lightweight nature of paper allowed the notebook to go into a slow glide, leaving it relatively undamaged, with most of the damage probably occurring after the return to Earth, having landed in a humid, swampy area," read the National Library of Israel release.

Ramon's other recovered personal effects included a copy of "Moon Landscape," a drawing by Petr Ginz, who was killed at Auschwitz; a small Torah scroll earlier rescued from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; and some wine for blessing on the Sabbath. There was also a letter from Ramon's son Assaf (who later as a fighter pilot was killed in a 2009 flight training accident), as well as a notebook that he used to jot down his experiences.

The diary was at first taken to the Israel Museum, where the pages were carefully restored and preserved, as aided by the Israel Police's forensic department.

Twenty years later, the document was delivered to the National Library by staff members and Ramon's two sons. The diary was scanned and then placed into a vault with the institution's other rare items. The vault is climate controlled such that the conditions inside are monitored to keep its holdings safe.

"The diary is in good company here in the same room as Isaac Newton and Maimonides, along with Ilan Ramon's letter to Prof. Yeshayahu Leibovitz," Marcela Szekely, head of the conservation laboratory at the National Library of Israel, said in a statement.

Other items held by the library include a copy of the diary kept by NASA astronaut Jeff Hoffman, the first American Jewish man to fly into space. Over the course of his five space shuttle missions between 1985 and 1996, Hoffman flew a number of Jewish items, including a Chanukah dreidel and a small Torah scroll from which he read from the Book of Genesis while in orbit.

According to Szekely, after being further studied and cared for, Ramon's diary will be considered for display, joining the library's permanent exhibits.

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Adam Higginbotham was touring with his first book when got the idea from a frequent question.

The New York Times bestselling author of "Midnight in Chernobyl," Higginbotham had spent years researching the April 26, 1986 explosion, which caused the worst nuclear disaster in history.

"People often asked me whether I remembered where I was when I heard the news about Chernobyl," said Higginbotham in an interview with collectSPACE.com. "And I always had to admit I didn't, but what I did remember very clearly was where I was when I heard about Challenger, which happened almost exactly three months before."

"So when I started looking for something to write for my second book, Challenger was already on my mind," he said.

"Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space" hit store shelves on Tuesday (May 14).

Related: Space shuttle Challenger and the disaster that changed NASA forever

collectSPACE spoke with Higginbotham about "Challenger," how he went about researching the Jan. 28, 1986 tragedy and why he thinks the loss of the STS-51L crew resonated among so many to become not just a national, but international milestone event. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

collectSPACE (cS): Since you mention remembering, where were you when you first learned of the space shuttle Challenger disaster?

Adam Higginbotham: Because of the time difference — I was at school in England — I completed my school day and went out with my friends that evening. So I didn't learn about it until late that night, about probably nine or 10 o'clock, when I got home. My mother told me about it, and I just couldn't comprehend what she was telling me. I was so astonished by the news.

cS: Were you already interested spaceflight?

Higginbotham: I was fascinated by the space program when I was a kid. The shuttle program was really my part of the space program, because I was 12 when STS-1 was launched. I remember very excitedly watching it on TV in 1981.

I later reported off and on in magazine pieces about the space program, or about space travel, I should say, over the years.

cS: So you were inspired to write about the Challenger tragedy. There have been other books written on the topic. What did you think you could add to the subject that was not already covered?

Higginbotham: When I began to look at the available material and look at the sort of work that had been published about it up to that date, I realized that nobody had really attempted a serious narrative nonfiction account of everything that happened since immediately after the disaster, when the first couple of books were written in 1987 by journalists who had been there at the time.

Then I began to discover the amount of information that had come out in the years since then. Not only the number of people whose accounts might be more frank as the intervening years passed, but also I became aware of how many eyewitnesses were beginning to die. So there was an opportunity to tell this story before it disappeared into history and before those people who could talk about what they had seen themselves, and witnessed and experienced themselves, were no longer with us.

I also wanted to approach the story in a slightly different way, because I realized that the two accidents — the Challenger disaster and the Columbia accident in 2003 — had both overshadowed the public's conception of the shuttle program to the extent that people really were only aware of the disasters. That made, in retrospect, all of the achievements of the shuttle program seem to some extent to be in the shadow of failure.

So I wanted to write an account of of Challenger that told it in its full context. Not only the remarkable piece of engineering that the shuttle, itself, was — and it was far ahead of its time, a lot of its technology was — but also the kind of amazing achievements it made. There were front page news stories in the 1980s, in the years leading up to the Challenger accident, that people now, a whole generation of readers, might not be aware of.

And I also wanted to tell the stories of of the entire crew, because there were seven astronauts on board Challenger and yet so many accounts of what happened to them focused almost to the exclusion of everyone else on the story of ["teacher in space"] Christa McAuliffe.

cS: What was the reaction by the astronauts' family members when you approached them for interviews? Were they receptive of you writing a book now?

Higginbotham: They were extremely receptive.

I took my time before approaching them because I wanted to make sure that I fully understood the story and I understood their part and the way that they might feel about it before I approached them. I tried to make clear exactly the sort of book that I had in mind and what I wanted to tell. As I said, I wanted to put the story not only into its technological context, but also human context. And I think that when they understood what I had in mind, they were more receptive than they might otherwise have been.

Several of the family members had also read "Midnight in Chernobyl," and I think that went a long way to showing them the narrative that I had in mind.

Related: Remembering Challenger: NASA's 1st shuttle tragedy in photos

cS: You mentioned losing eyewitnesses to death. Beyond the astronauts' families, who were some of your primary sources for the book?

Higginbotham: Two of them died before the book came out. George Abbey [director of flight crew operations] recently died and Robert Frosch, who was the administrator of NASA who really did most to make the shuttle program come to fruition under President Carter's administration, were two of the first people who I spoke to. Bob Frosch died within within weeks of me talking to him.

cS: To the extent that you needed to assistance of people at NASA today, how supportive was the space agency?

Higginbotham: They could not have been more helpful. I was almost immediately put in touch with Brian Odom, NASA's chief historian, and one of the first things he said to me was that he had read "Midnight in Chernobyl" and thought that I was a good person to be writing this book. He liked the approach that I had taken with that book and really enjoyed reading it, so he said he would do anything he could to help me.

Brian was good to his word. He spent months organizing a research trip on my behalf where I was able to go to all of the principal locations at NASA facilities that were central to the story. And all of the public affairs officers I dealt with during that research trip were extremely helpful, and that really made the book possible.

cS: How so? Why was it important to visit those locations now, more than 35 years later?

Higginbotham: It made it possible to describe very precisely what the view from the roof of the Launch Control Center is like; what the light is like at 11:30 in the morning in January. It made it possible to describe what the view from the Johnson Space Center director's window is, what the meeting room on the ninth floor of Building 1 is like... it's all of those things.

It was those details in the book that wouldn't be possible to describe accurately without actually going into a lot of those places so that I could understand not only just topography, but the lighting and in some cases the smell, because that odor of old cigarette smoke and floor polish that lingered in the hallways of the astronaut office for more than 50 years is still there.

cS: "Challenger" has the potential of reaching a lot of different audiences, ranging from the space-interested public to those who know little about the subject and those who remember the tragedy versus those who were not yet born when it happened. Who did you write the book for?

Higginbotham: I write the sort of books that I enjoy reading. So it's a history book that is written with the pace and level of human detail of a novel. It is as factually accurate as it was possible to make, but it's written for a general reader principally.

I would hope that it has the level of technical accuracy that would satisfy someone who knows a great deal about the subject, but at the same time be sufficiently comprehensive to contain information that someone who has read books about the subject before and knows it well will still not necessarily be aware of. Partly because I've gathered information from a pretty wide variety of sources. I've conducted a lot of original interviews with eyewitnesses and people who worked on the program at the time. So through that I've gathered a lot of information and I have also unearthed quite a bit of archival material that those people may not be aware of and wouldn't have come across before.

One thing that I tried to make sure in both of my books is that they had the absolute minimum amount of technical detail necessary to understand the narrative and carry the story forward without their being too technical to get into the weeds. For me, that's the real difference between this type of book and a technical book that might be written purely for one specific part of the audience.

cS: On the subject of technical details, now that you've reviewed the tragedy and its causes in detail, do you agree with the findings of the Rogers Commission that investigated the loss of Challenger and its crew? Some other recent books have suggested that the commission's focus on NASA's management practices were not the root cause, but rather it was the budget constraints facing the program from its start and the design of what they argue was an inherently flawed vehicle.

Higginbotham: I don't think that those two things you just described are mutually exclusive. The Rogers Commission's report traces the limitations of the design of the shuttle back to its budget constraints. That's the original sin of the shuttle, and it was more than clearly laid out in the final findings of the commission.

I think that what is true is that the way in which the findings of the Rogers Commission were presented to the public by the media at the time were skewed in a very specific direction. I think their findings were extremely comprehensive, but they weren't necessarily reported that comprehensively at the time, or if they were, the way that people remember it was only the malfeasance on the part of a handful of senior NASA managers and obviously, the situation was more complex than that.

I hope I've shown all of these things in the book, because I was at pains to do so.

Related: NASA's fatal Challenger launch still echoes through the agency today

cS: Lastly, looking back, how did writing "Challenger" change your perspective of human spaceflight, if in fact it did?

Higginbotham: I'm not really sure it changed it at all.

One of the reasons why I wanted to write the book in the first place is because it's very difficult for people who weren't around in 1986 to understand exactly how shattering the Challenger disaster was, because nothing like that had ever happened before. It's hard for people to understand how shocking and, more specifically, how hard to believe, how hard to comprehend what was happening as it was happening.

And I think that it is really true to say that there was a world before the Challenger accident and the world after the Challenger accident, in the same way that there was a pre-9/11 world and post-9/11 world, because it was so unexpected. People had come to accept to a great extent that NASA was capable of almost anything and an accident like this simply wouldn't happen. For a few seconds after it happened right in front of them and for even longer than that, people found it almost impossible to conceive that it actually had been the shuttle that had been destroyed right in front of their eyes.

I think that once you've seen that happen and once you understand that that's possible, then the way you think of human spaceflight is different. And so seeing as I was 17 when it happened, I watched the footage on TV, and that's what changed my conception of human spaceflight. The things that have happened since, including the Columbia accident in 2003, have not significantly changed the way that I think about it. I understood that day exactly how dangerous and risky it was and how brave anyone who agrees to climb on top of a rocket must be, and I don't think working on this book really changed that.

"Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space" written by Adam Higginbotham and published by Simon & Schuster is available in book stores now.

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A collectible embroidered patch created to honor the first woman to command a U.S. spacecraft features a geometric pattern representing the glow of her space shuttle lifting off into the night sky.

The colorful, diamond-shaped shards could also be seen as the figurative "glass ceiling" that Eileen Collins broke through on her way to the stars.

The latest patch from the 59,000-member Space Hipsters group on Facebook, each Eileen Collins "Signature Edition" emblem includes the astronaut's autograph sewn into the design. Sales of the patches benefit Taking Up Space, a nonprofit organization empowering middle-school-age Native American girls to soar beyond their barriers by sending them to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama.

The second woman to attend the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School, Collins was selected to become a NASA astronaut in 1990. She was the first woman to fly as the pilot on a space shuttle mission when she launched on STS-63 in 1995, and she flew again in the right-side seat on STS-84 two years later. Both flights visited the space station Mir, with the earlier being the first shuttle mission to rendezvous with the Russian outpost and the latter the sixth to dock there.

Then in 1999, Collins became the first woman to command a U.S. spacecraft, leading the STS-93 crew aboard space shuttle Columbia on a mission to deploy the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Six years later, after the loss of Columbia on a subsequent mission, Collins led the orbiter fleet's return to flight, commanding the STS-114 crew on shuttle Discovery.

Related: New film 'Spacewoman' to celebrate NASA's Eileen Collins, 1st woman space commander and pilot

In total, Collins logged more than 36 days in space over the course of her four missions. Collins was the 21st U.S. woman to fly into space and the 27th worldwide. She was the 328th person to leave Earth's atmosphere and the 321st to orbit the planet, according to the Association of Space Explorers' Registry of Space Travelers.

Collins penned her memoirs, "Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars," in 2021. It is now the basis for an upcoming documentary, "Spacewoman."

Collins' Signature Edition patch depicts her history-making STS-93 launch and includes stars in its border to represent each of her shuttle missions. Other stars in the emblem's design symbolize the first woman to fly into space, Soviet-era cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova; the first U.S. female astronaut in space, Sally Ride; and the four women who have lost their lives in the pursuit of spaceflight and exploration, Judy Resnik, Christa McAuliffe, Kalpana Chawla and Laurel Clark.

As with previous Signature Edition releases, the Collins patch has been produced by A-B Emblem, the North Carolina-based company that also is NASA's supplier and made the STS-63, STS-84, STS-93 and STS-114 emblems that Collins wore into space.

There are four versions of Collins' patch offered for donations to Taking Up Space:

• A limited edition of 50 "gold" patches with Collins' facsimile signature embroidered in metallic gold thread, the shuttle's plume in orange thread and individually numbered display cards, each hand-signed by Collins.
  
• A limited edition of 100 "silver" patches "signed" in silver metallic thread with the shuttle's plume in shades of blue. They also come on numbered cards autographed by Collins.
  
• Two open edition patches that lack metallic thread and come without a display card. Both versions include Collins' signature in white thread, and are available in either blue or orange colorways.

The patches are priced at $75 for each gold edition, $50 for silver and $15 for the open edition (or $25 for a set of the blue and orange variants). There is a limit of one gold and two silver patches per person.

There are also 4-inch (10 centimeters) vinyl stickers of the open edition blue and orange designs available for $3 ($5 for two) as add-on to patch orders. Details on how to place orders can be found on the Space Hipsters Facebook group.

The Collins patch is the fifth entry in the Space Hipsters' Signature Edition series. The group previously offered emblems celebrating Apollo 13 pilot Fred Haise and shuttle astronauts Mike Mullane, Hoot Gibson and John Herrington.

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