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NASA’s InSight spacecraft made it to Mars on November 26. The landing ended a 300 million–mile journey that lasted more than six months. Flight controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California, cheered when InSight touched down. “Flawless,” Rob…
People first set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped from the Apollo 11 spacecraft and planted an American flag on the moon’s rocky surface. Six NASA lunar missions followed over the…
Stargazers in ancient Greece noticed that during the night, a few bright objects moved among the constellations. They called these objects planetes, meaning “wanderers.” We still call them planets. But our understanding of these celestial bodies has grown since…
NASA has selected nine astronauts to ride the first commercial capsules into space. These astronauts will travel to the International Space Station. They will ride in capsules built by two private companies. The company SpaceX is developing a capsule…
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. He was commander of NASA’s Apollo 11 lunar mission. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” he famously said as he…
On February 6, the Falcon Heavy rocket blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida. It used the same launchpad that sent the first astronauts to the moon, in 1969. But this was not a NASA mission. The rocket…
Life can be very unpredictable for astronauts living and working on the International Space Station (ISS). There is no gravity. Parts of the station might stop working at any time. Space objects come flying at the station out of nowhere. …
Chamber A is a historic landmark. It is located in the Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas. The chamber looks like a bank vault. But when the right machinery is turned on, it seems like a giant pocket of outer…
Animals have long been on the front lines of scientific discovery. Time and again, they have been given the lead in exploring new frontiers. But those pioneers didn’t volunteer for their missions. Take the thousands of monkeys and mice that…
Watch this video to introduce the Space Exploration Text Set