24 amazing facts you didn’t know about NASA

This comes as no surprise to anyone who’s watched the largely accurate portrayal of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission and the ways in which NASA scientists on Earth worked miraculous fixes that could bring the crew safely home. But NASA astronauts themselves are no improvisational slouches, either. Apollo 11’s Aldrin actually used a ballpoint pen to fix an essential but broken arming switch in the lunar module, reports NBC.

We talk about last meals. What about the first meals – on the Moon? The first-ever was consumed by Aldrin and Armstrong and consisted of bacon squares, peaches, sugar cookie cubes, pineapple-grapefruit drink, and coffee, all of which were stashed in the lunar module and consumed beside the Sea of Tranquility, reports Smithsonian Magazine.

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But it’s for the benefit of our entertainment, stuck as we are back on our home planet. To wit: as Science 101 reports, Alan Shepard, who was on the first manned NASA flight, told reporters that the view from space for the 15 minutes he got to enjoy it was “beautiful” and “brilliantly clear.” The truth: the sun-blocking filter on the periscope he looked through also blocked out most of that beauty and clarity.

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Being in space can be isolating and depressing, so NASA has worked hard to mitigate the effects of the long days, weeks, and months astronauts are trapped in small vessels. For example, Wired reports that on the International Space Station, NASA and its partner space programs around the world made sure there was a large-windowed cupola included in the design that astronauts could visit when they needed some personal and private time.

The first US woman in space was actually the third woman of all – Sally Ride, on the space shuttle Challenger, following in the footsteps of Soviet cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya on the Soyuz T-7 mission. The first woman space station commander, though, was American Peggy Whitson, who took on the role in 2008. She’s also the first woman to command the space station twice – the second time was in 2016, according to Space.com. Mae Johnson was the first African-American woman in space, in 1992.

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Armstrong’s footprints remain in the lunar dust 50 years after he first walked on the Moon’s surface. But that’s not all that NASA and other space agencies have left behind there. Visitors to the orb would find all manner of equipment, clothing, flags, plus bags of urine, faeces, and vomit.

We know now that there’s nothing alive on the Moon – or anywhere else in our solar system that we’ve yet confirmed. But back when Apollo 11 returned home from its visit, NASA was concerned about the possibility of ‘lunar germs’, reports NBC News. So, it quarantined the mission’s astronauts for three long weeks.

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The agency is a leader in tech of all kinds. But some tech has benefits that resonate far beyond the mission at hand. For example, in 2004, U.S. astronaut Mike Fincke was 370 kilometres from Earth aboard the International Space Station when his daughter was born. But he didn’t have to miss the whole event; he was able to hear her first cries thanks to what NASA refers to only as state-of-the-art ‘communication technology’.

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Some of NASA’s amazing firsts predate its missions to the Moon and beyond. In 1958, the Project Score communications relay satellite was sent into orbit, from which President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Christmas message for that year was beamed out to anyone who might be listening, making the 34th President’s the first voice ever to be sent from space.

According to NASA’s history site, the various 3′-by-5′ nylon flags that were sent to the moon on the Apollo 11 mission were all purchased at a Sears store in Houston, near the Manned Spacecraft Centre. Apparently, NASA secretaries had been deployed to make these purchases on their lunch hours.