Texas Finally Reclaims the Moon
A Houston company’s vessel returns America to the most remote portion of our state for the first time since 1972.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has called Texas home since 1963, when the Manned Spacecraft Center opened in Houston. The site was selected thanks to the lobbying efforts of Lyndon Baines Johnson, then vice president, and Houston Congressman Albert Thomas. “The road to the Moon lies through Houston,” Thomas said at the time.
A Houston company’s vessel returns America to the most remote portion of our state for the first time since 1972.
How the aeronautical industry’s profit motive achieved escape velocity.
A new virtual reality experience launches you to the International Space Station, where you join the crew and see Earth like you’ve never seen it before.
Ghosts? Aliens? Cheese? A 4G cell tower? We list the possibilities.
Fifty years after humans first walked on the moon, you too can play astronaut for a day.
To mark the 50th anniversary of Apollo’s 11 launch, Ellis covers Nina Simone’s classic version of “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon.”
New PBS space-race documentary ‘Chasing the Moon’ highlights her challenges as the only woman in Mission Control.
With NASA’s ambitions trimmed, private space companies come to Texas, dreaming of Mars.
Fifty years after man walked on the Moon, mankind is still stranded on Earth. That’s not the way it was supposed to be.
The shuttle age commences, becomes routine, and draws to a close, while Mars beckons.
America finds inspiration and salvation on the moon—and then keeps going.
A letter from our editor.
Petty state rivalries, the final frontier.
A Dallas man knows all about the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. It’s the people he wonders about.
NASA’s food scientists in Houston keep the astronauts on the International Space Station healthy and well fed. Thermostabilized seafood gumbo, anyone?
More like awwwstronaut, right?
This isn't a real proposal, but it is really neat.
For a new phenomenon, the exclusively-light-skinned faces on Emoji sure look they were created in a different era.
Ten thousand "city killers" pass by the Earth unnoticed every year, said a NASA official.
Ten years ago, Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over East Texas as it reentered the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.
On September 12, 1962, John F. Kennedy explained why “we choose to go to the moon” to a crowd of 40,000 at Rice University.
What people are saying about NASA's first woman in space, who died of pancreatic cancer Monday at the age of 61.
On February 20, 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth.
Some Apollo-era astronauts, including Apollo 13 Commander James Lovell, had their hands slapped by NASA for putting space artifacts on the auction block.
Few things are as majestic as the launch of the space shuttle. But after nearly thirty years, NASA is sending up its final orbiters. Here's the view from up close.
Ten years after the Challenger disaster, there are still dark clouds on the horizon for NASA’s space shuttle program.
The lovesick antics of diapered astronaut Lisa Nowak are some combination of funny and sad but seemingly not revealing of anything larger, until you realize that her tragic, tabloidy breakdown says everything you need to know about NASA’s many troubles.
Thousands craned their necks at the sky Thursday to catch of glimpse of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which made its final trip across Texas perched on the back of a 747.
Joe Gutheinz has helped recover 79 moon rocks that the government lost track of in the past four decades.
The checklist that astronaut James Lovell scratched out to calculate his crippled spacecraft’s reentry into earth’s orbit fetched $388,375 at auction in Dallas on Wednesday.
Forty years ago, the attention to space exploration was constant. And the faces of the exploration gave rise to a group of larger than life individuals—the astronauts.
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made history as the first humans to set foot on the surface of the moon. Forty years later, the researchers, astronauts, engineers, scientists, and NASA officials who made the voyage possible remember the day the Eagle landed.
“It’s funny: I’ve never been scared on a shuttle mission. It’s just the nature of the job. You’re busy, you’re focused, you’re well trained, and you go, ‘You know, if I’m going to die, there’s nothing I can do about it.’”
In this exclusive excerpt from Stephen Harrigan’s new novel, Challenger Park, a female astronaut confronts mommy-track issues on the way to outer space.
The break-up of the space shuttle Columbia was a chilling reminder that the astronauts who dare to dream and risk their lives for the benefit of all mankind are, at the end of the day, mere mortals.
As the 77-year-old prepares for yet another liftoff, fans and foes alike are praising his missionÑand questioning NASA’s.
Computer users at NASA don’t get Mac—they get even.
The inside story of how industrious NASA scientists discovered signs of life in a Martian rock and boosted the fortunes of the tabloids, Hollywood producers, and even the president.
Operation Lightning Strike, the FBI’s bizarre NASA probe, accomplished many things—all of them negative. Plus, the bureau strikes (out) again in Houston.
The death of the superconducting supercollider may have been traumatic, but at their core the people of Waxahachie haven’t changed.
How glad-handing Hollywood and hidebound NASA joined forces to make Apollo 13, one of this summer’s hottest movies.
Locked away in NASA’s storage vaults was some of the most glorious footage ever filmed. I thought turning it into a movie would be a snap. Ten years later I’ve revised my opinion.
The seeds of the Challenger disaster were sowed long ago, in the space agency’s conflict between its ideals and its politics.
Their business may read like a sci-fi script, but these aging astronauts, former Nasa engineers, technocrats, and high-risk junkies are serious about selling space.
What astronaut Alan Bean saw on the moon changed his life. Now, with paint and canvas, he’s trying to let the rest of us see it too.
Hundreds of new computer companies have made Texas the likely successor to California’s Silicon Valley, and it all started with two firms in Dallas.
“Light this candle.”
His first spacecraft blew up on the pad and his primary investor died, but the first free enterprise rocket finally flew from Matagorda.
Astronauts used to be dashing pilots. Now they’re doctors, scientists, and . . . sanitary engineers.
Ten years ago the Apollo astronauts, technicians and scientists all, landed on the Moon and touched what poets only dreamed. But that touch changed their lives.