See the men and women who made space flight a reality hard at work.
NASA was started in 1958, just as the Space Race with the Soviets was heating up. With pressure to reach the stars before their rivals, the 1960s saw the new department expand rapidly, with thousands of workers focusing on research, flight testing, and learning everything they could about the nature of the final frontier.
Go behind the scenes with the geniuses who brought what was then only a fantasy into the real world.
1
Engineer Frank Kutina and a mechanic examine the setup of an advanced combustor rig inside one of the test cells
Lewis Research Center, 1966
2
George Mazaris, works with an assistant to obtain the preliminary measurements of cadmium sulfide thin-film solar cells being tested in the Space Environmental Chamber
Lewis Research Center, 1967
3
Set up of a Brayton Cycle Power System test in the Space Power Facility’s massive vacuum chamber
Lewis Research Center, 1969
4
Richard Lancashire operates a gas laser interferometer in the Electric Conversion Laboratory
Lewis Research Center, 1966
5
A researcher checks a 22-percent scale model of a Convair F‒106 Delta Dart
Lewis Research Center, 1967
6
Atlas-Centaur Orbiting Astronomical Observatory Shroud Test
Lewis Research Center, 1968
7
Technicians set up test hardware inside the test section of the Icing Research Tunnel
Lewis Research Center, 1969
8
A rectangular drop test vehicle perched above 450-foot shaft at the Zero Gravity Research Facility
Lewis Research Center, 1969
9
A Centaur second-stage rocket in the Space Propulsion Research Facility
Lewis Research Center, 1969
10
Astronaut Neil Armstrong examines a Vertical and Short Takeoff and Landing test setup
Lewis Research Center, late 1950s
11
Screwjacks located on the exterior of the second throat section in the 10- by 10-Foot Supersonic Wind Tunnel
Lewis Research Center, 1969
12
A technician prepares a test sample in the Zero Gravity Research Facility clean room
Lewis Research Center, 1968
13
Worker in the Zero Gravity Facility
Lewis Research Center, 1966
14
Patricia Coles, Miss NASA, poses with the Apollo 8 capsule
1970
15
Operators in the Engine Research Building’s Central Control Room Lewis Research Center, 1968
Lewis Research Center, 1968
16
Vibration Test of a SNAP-8 Sodium-Potassium Alloy Pump
Lewis Research Center, 1970
17
Setup of a Surveyor/Atlas/Centaur shroud in the Space Power Chambers for a leak test
Lewis Research Center, 1966
18
Workers inspecting a Solar Collector Mirror
Lewis Research Center, 1966
19
Robert Johnson sets the lubricant flow while Donald Buckley adjusts the bearing specimen on an artificial hip simulator
Lewis Research Center, 1966
20
Solar Mirror Fabrication in the NASA Technical Services Building
1966
21
Looking over blueprints for the Stennis Space Center
Mississippi, 1966
22
Construction of the Stennis Space Center
Mississippi, 1966
23
Rocket testing at the Stennis Space Center
Mississippi, 1966
24
The completed Stennis Space Center
Mississippi, 1966
25
George C. Marshall Space Flight Center
Mississippi, 1966
26
Donald Rhodes and Clyde Greer monitor the operation of the Plum Brook Reactor Facility from the control room
Lewis Research Center, early 1960s
