NASA Art Program
The NASA Art Program was founded by James Dean in 1962 to record the history of space exploration through different media and genres in order to reach, educate, and inspire a variety of audiences. Paintings, illustrations, photographs, poetry, and even songs have been commissioned by NASA from notable artists, including Norman Rockwell, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Rauschenberg, and Patti LaBelle. View some of the original artworks chronicling the wonders, risks, and triumphs of space exploration athttp://www.hq.nasa.gov/copernica. The current curator, Bertram Ulrich, joined Dean to write a book celebrating the images for NASA’s 50th anniversary. The book can be found in bookstores or online at http://www.amazon.com/NASA-ART-50-Years-Exploration/dp/0810972875.
Learning and Exploration
Relive NASA’s journeys to the moon through the personal stories of the astronauts, engineers, and flight directors who helped make man’s journey into space a reality. The Discovery Channel site includes several clips from the six-part series When We Left Earth along with interactive features that highlight NASA’s effect on our everyday lives, test your knowledge about the twenty-four men who went to the moon, allow you to interactively explore the universe, and more. Listen to the firsthand accounts of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle at http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/nasa/nasa.html.
Web of Knowledge
The new year is often a time when people reflect upon what they accomplished the year before and how those experiences will help them face new challenges, and NASA is no different. Though the Agency recently celebrated fifty years of exploration, it also took time to review its discoveries and accomplishments during 2008. Among the top ten accomplishments for the year are the International Space Station’s ten-year anniversary, Hubble’s discovery of a planet circling a distant star, and completion of the successful Phoenix lander mission to Mars. Read about these and more at https://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/yir2k8/index.html.
For More on Our Stories
Additional information pertaining to articles featured in this issue can be found by visiting the following Web sites:
Mars Express
http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Mars_Express/index.html
Phoenix
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu
Space Shuttle and International Space Station
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/shuttle_station/index.html
SOFIA
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/SOFIA/
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