NASA HISTORY

NEWS&NOTES

Volume 39, Number 3 Fall 2022

NASA’S RETURN 

TO THE MOON

A LOOK AT THE HISTORY BEHIND 

THE ARTEMIS PROGRAM

4 The Deep Space Network’s 

Critical Role for Artemis I

7 Glenn Research Center’s 50-Plus Years 

of Environmental Spacecraft Testing 

10 Langley Research Center’s 

Contributions to Artemis

11 Artemis and Water on the Moon

THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LAST 

CREWED MISSION TO THE MOON 

14 Precious Mementos of Apollo 17

17 Mississippi Test Facility’s Transition 

to the Post-Apollo Era

2 From the Acting Chief Historian • 18 News from NASA’s 

Centers • 20 Remembering JFK’s Speech at Rice University

22 Other Aerospace History News • 25 Upcoming Meetings

A full Moon is in view from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s 

Kennedy Space Center on 14 June 2022. The Artemis I Space Launch 

System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft, atop the mobile launcher, 

are being prepared for a wet dress rehearsal to practice timelines 

and procedures for launch. (Photo credit: NASA/Cory Huston)

National Aeronautics and 

Space Administration

NASA HISTORY DIVISION

OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

From the Acting Chief Historian

ON 29 AUGUST, thousands gathered at Kennedy Space Center and millions tuned in to see the 

launch of the Space Launch System 

(SLS) on its first test flight, known as 

Artemis I. A problem with one of SLS’s 

four RS-25 engines led NASA to scrub 

the launch. NASA Administrator Bill 

Nelson addressed the media, saying that 

the Agency had no plans to “launch 

until it’s right.” A second launch attempt 

on 3 September met a similar fate, this 

time because of a hydrogen leak.

Aerospace history is packed with the 

challenges of first attempts. The initial attempt to launch the uncrewed 

Mercur y Redstone vehicle on 

21 November 1960 resulted in a spectacular failure with the rocket lifting 

4 to 5 inches off the pad and settling 

back down again to stand proud as 

the escape pylon rocketed 4,000 feet 

into the air. When the smoke settled, 

the rocket stood where it had started, 

draped in both its main and reserve 

parachutes. Not exactly what the 

designers had intended.

The Space Shuttle struggled with 

delays of its own as it made the trek 

from the Vehicle Assembly Building 

(VAB) to low-Earth orbit. But it is 

possibly the launch of Apollo 4, the 

first uncrewed flight of the Saturn V 

and its many issues, that offers the 

most instructive parallel. The Apollo 4 

mission was intended as an “all-up” test 

of the Moon rocket designed to bring 

President John F. Kennedy’s goal back 

within the realm of possibility.

Years of delays resulted as solutions to 

one technical issue were followed by the 

discovery of another issue. Each stage 

of the rocket experienced problems 

many thought would bring the program to a halt, including combustion 

instability in the F-1 engine, a litany 

of problems with the S-II stage, and 

a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” of 

a third stage (S-IVB) on the test stand 

in Sacramento. The tragic loss of the 

Apollo 1 crew during ground testing 

on 27 January 1967 also reverberated 

across all aspects of the program.

As NASA sought to recover from the 

tragedy of the fire, technical problems 

continued to mount. As the launch 

date drew closer, on 26 October Apollo 

Program Director Major General 

Sam Phillips put the early delays into 

perspective, stating that the program 

was “in a very complex learning process” and that the Agency was “going 

to take all the time we need on this 

first launch.” Phillips’s call for patience 

was understandable, given the considerable delays in getting the Saturn V to 

Cape Canaveral.

Aerospace history is 

packed with the challenges 

of first attempts.

 Aerial view of Apollo 4 rollout on 26 August 1967. (Photo credit: NASA)

2
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

In March 1967, a mission briefing 

agenda noted 1,200 problems, which 

led to 32 discrepancy reports. One 

interesting problem was the discovery 

of an errant bolt in an F-1 engine. In 

June, the launch vehicle had to be 

unstacked in the VAB after the contractor, North American Rockwell, 

discovered 80 weld flaws in the second 

stage (S-II). This discovery led the first 

stage (S-IC) contractor, Boeing, to 

conduct a similar investigation, which 

uncovered similar problems.

Once necessar y measures were 

taken and the vehicle was restacked, 

Apollo  4 was rolled out to Launch 

Complex 39A on 26  August 1967. 

The troubles did not end there. The 

Countdown Demonstration Test led 

to, in the words of one program manager, 

“numerous holds, delays, crew fatigue, 

scrubs, and recycles.” A test that was 

supposed to take one week wound up 

taking three. As always, problems were 

occurring in all stages of the vehicle. 

In his work Stages to Saturn, historian 

Roger Bilstein recounts how propellant valves in the first stage that were 

supposed to open in sequence opened 

simultaneously; components in the 

second stage were damaged when the 

liquid oxygen tanks were filled too 

rapidly; an accumulation of moisture 

while at the pad caused shorts in the 

cable connections in the third stage; 

heating of electronics occurred in the 

instrument unit; and malfunctions of 

the ground support equipment prevented proper pressurization of helium 

bottles. The list became longer at every 

turn, causing the launch to slip from 

October to early November. Many 

inside and outside the Agency questioned whether that date would hold.

Once all the problems were addressed 

with the Saturn V, a launch date was 

finally set for November 7. But as the 

day drew closer, managers at Marshall 

Space Flight Center remained concerned about potential leaks in the seal 

rings of the liquid oxygen fill and drain 

valves due to the vehicle’s long sojourn 

at the pad. This problem, combined 

with similar anxiety over batteries in 

the second stage, caused Phillips to 

move the launch from 7 to 9 November.

Finally, on the morning of 9 November 

1967, Apollo 4 lifted off the pad for a 

nearly flawless flight. The successful 

flight served to quiet critics, calm the 

nerves of the workforce, and place 

President Kennedy’s goal back within 

reach. The “all-up” approach of launching all three live stages at once, for the 

vehicle’s first mission, certainly presented a multitude of challenges. But 

the success of Apollo 4 pointed toward 

the brilliance of that bold decision.

History teaches us many things. 

Knowing the lessons of the past can 

serve as a calm in the face of the storm. 

The thousands of NASA employees 

and contractors who have overcome 

numerous challenges to get Artemis 

I to this point can take solace in the 

fact that those obstacles they face 

today will make the payoff all the more 

satisfying. The engineers, management, 

and support personnel who celebrated 

Apollo 11 on 20 July 1969 were the 

same ones who lamented the delays 

getting Apollo 4 off the ground. When 

the Artemis program does deliver the 

first woman and person of color to 

the lunar surface, these early struggles will be relegated to the dustbins 

of history. 

Brian C. Odom

Acting Chief Historian

The first Saturn V lifts off 

from Launch Complex 39-A 

at Kennedy Space Center 

on 9 November 1967. (Photo 

credit: NASA)

Knowing the lessons of the 

past can serve as a calm 

in the face of the storm. 

From the Acting Chief Historian (continued)

3
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

The Deep Space Network’s 

Critical Role for Artemis I

» By Laurance Fauconnet, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

OVER 50 YEARS AGO, NASA captured the world’s imagination and inspired generations with 

the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Back then, 

NASA’s communications networks 

were crucial to mission success. These 

days, NASA’s Deep Space Network, 

which is managed and operated by 

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory 

(JPL) in Southern California, provides 

a critical service for supporting the 

Artemis I mission.

The Deep Space Network handles communications for Artemis I beyond lowEarth orbit. These include the mission’s 

outbound trajectory corrections, outbound powered flyby, return powered 

flyby burns, and return trajectory corrections. NASA’s Near Space Network, 

which is managed and operated by 

Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) 

in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides communications data in and below lowEarth orbit.

At the Moon, the Deep Space Network 

will enable insertion into distant retrograde orbit. Distant retrograde orbit 

is a highly stable orbit in which Orion 

travels retrograde, or opposite, from 

the direction the Moon travels around 

Earth. The Deep Space Network will 

maintain communications with Orion 

over five stages: in distant retrograde 

orbit; during the burns for departure; 

during return power flyby; during 

return transit; and during the final 

return trajectory correction burn, with 

a handoff to the Near Space Network’s 

Tracking and Data Relay Satellite 

(TDRS) constellation.

The Deep Space Network will also 

help facilitate communications for all 

three of the Artemis I mission’s secondary payload deployment stops. The 

CubeSats launching with Artemis I are 

small satellites that will be deployed 

along Orion’s trajectory to provide 

additional research opportunities for 

scientists and engineers. After deployment, most of the CubeSats will communicate through the Deep Space 

Network and pick up tracking data 

used for their navigation.

A Legacy of Supporting 

Lunar Exploration

JPL has a rich history of lunar exploration. In the 1960s, JPL began to 

develop robotic spacecraft to explore 

other worlds. This effort began with 

the Ranger and Surveyor missions to 

the Moon, paving the way for NASA’s 

Apollo piloted lunar landings. Rangers 

7, 8, and 9, launched in 1964 and 1965, 

taking photos of the Moon as they 

descended toward intentional impacts. 

From 1966 through 1968, Surveyors 

1, 3, 5, 6, and 7 made soft landings on 

the Moon.

Australian technicians are seen operating and monitoring systems for the 26-meter (85-

foot) antenna at the Tidbinbilla Deep Space Instrumentation Facility (now known as the 

Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex) in this photo from January 1969. (Photo 

credit: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation [CSIRO]/NASA)

4
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

That legacy of lunar exploration also 

includes the Deep Space Network.

Although primarily tasked with tracking uncrewed spacecraft exploring 

beyond geosynchronous orbit, the Deep 

Space Network also has a long history 

of supporting crewed lunar missions.

On 20 July 1969, NASA astronauts 

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, 

with Michael Collins orbiting above, 

became the first humans to land on 

another world, our Moon. Affixed to 

the inside of the Eagle lander’s door was 

a small, unconventional TV camera. 

The extraordinary images it captured 

showed Armstrong and Aldrin amid 

what Aldrin described as the “magnificent desolation” of the lunar surface.

Getting this incredible video to 

hundreds of millions of people back 

on Earth, gathered around countless 

television sets in rural homes, on city 

streets, and in remote villages around 

the globe, relied on the flexibility and 

resourcefulness of NASA’s Manned 

Space Flight Network and the Deep 

Space Network.

The Deep Space Network personnel 

designed the Manned Space Flight 

Network, a set of tracking stations 

built to support the Mercury, Gemini, 

Apollo, and Skylab space programs. 

The Manned Space Flight Network 

sites were constructed near the Deep 

Space Network complexes, located in 

Goldstone, California; Madrid, Spain; 

and Canberra, Australia, so that the 

Deep Space Network could provide 

additional support. After Apollo, the 

Manned Space Flight Network no longer needed the large antennas that had 

been used for lunar communication, 

and they were eventually transitioned 

to the Deep Space Network.

During lunar landing and liftoff, 

NASA “dishes” in Madrid, Spain, 

would provide tracking support for 

Apollo  11. But, at the time of the 

moonwalk, Madrid was facing away 

from the Moon and couldn’t “see” it. 

The job of getting those first historic 

pictures down to the world fell to 

tracking stations in Australia and here 

in the United States.

The Tidbinbilla Deep Space Instrumentation Facility is located in the Paddys River valley, 

about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from Canberra. In this July 1969 photo, a single 26-meter 

(85-foot) Deep Space Network antenna can be seen next to the facility. (Photo credit: 

CSIRO/NASA)

Getting this incredible video to hundreds of millions 

of people back on Earth, gathered around countless 

television sets in rural homes, on city streets, and in 

remote villages around the globe, relied on the flexibility 

and resourcefulness of NASA’s Manned Space Flight 

Network and the Deep Space Network.

5
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

When Armstrong finally started 

descending the Lunar Module ladder 3 hours after the Eagle landed at 

Tranquility Base, a 64-meter antenna 

at the Deep Space Network complex 

in Goldstone, California, received the 

first downlink and two-way communication from the surface of the Moon.

However, by the time Armstrong 

reached the foot of the ladder, Mission 

Control in Houston, Texas, had 

switched the transmission to NASA’s 

Honeysuckle Creek’s 26-meter antenna 

located outside of Canberra, Australia. 

The improvement in picture quality was 

extraordinary. Responsibility for voice 

communications, however, remained 

at Goldstone. Those iconic words in 

history—“That’s one small step for (a) 

man, one giant leap for mankind”—

ended their 240,000-mile journey to 

Earth at one location, while the pictures of Neil Armstrong speaking them 

came to be seen through another.

After almost 9 minutes into the 

broadcast, a 64-meter dish at Parkes 

Observatory, located in Parkes, New 

South Wales, Australia, provided an 

even better picture. Television transmission would continue through 

23 July 1969.

Since then, the 64-meter antenna 

at Goldstone has been expanded to 

70 meters. It has accumulated a rich 

legacy during its many years of supporting space exploration. In addition 

to capturing the words of astronauts 

on the Apollo Moon missions, the 

dish has communicated with every 

one of NASA’s major robotic solar 

system explorers. The antenna enabled 

the world to see the first-ever close-up 

images of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and 

Neptune; their rings; and their myriad moons, courtesy of the Pioneer, 

Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini missions. 

The antenna has also communicated 

with NASA’s Mars missions.

NASA has pushed the boundaries of 

space travel, and the antennas of the 

Deep Space Network are the indispensable link to explorers venturing beyond 

Earth. As we continue to explore the 

Moon and beyond, the Deep Space 

Network is there to provide the crucial connection for commanding our 

spacecraft and receiving never-before-seen images and scientific information, propelling our understanding 

of the universe, our solar system, and, 

ultimately, our place within it. 

Interior view of the 

Mission Operations 

Control Room in the 

Mission Control Center 

during the Apollo 11 lunar 

extravehicular activity. 

The television monitor 

shows astronauts Neil 

Armstrong and Buzz 

Aldrin on the surface of 

the Moon. (Photo credit: 

NASA)

The Deep Space Network’s Critical Role for 

Artemis I (continued)

6
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

Glenn Research Center’s 

50-Plus Years 

of Environmental 

Spacecraft Testing

» By Bob Arrighi, Glenn Research Center

NASA’S GLENN Research Center’s 

(GRC’s) 2020 qualification testing of the Orion spacecraft was 

just the latest in a decades-long series of 

tests of full-scale space vehicles in simulated space conditions. Unlike booster 

stages, these vehicles operate entirely in 

outer space and must be tested in an 

environment that recreates that setting.

The Center’s experience with realistic 

flight simulation began during World 

War II with the operation of entire 

fighter aircraft or wing sections of 

bombers in the Altitude Wind Tunnel 

(AWT). The tunnel, which was managed by Abe Silverstein, created the low 

pressures, cold temperatures, and dry 

air flow found at high altitudes.

Years later, in his role as NASA’s Chief 

of Space Flight Programs (1958–61), 

Silverstein learned that spacecraft 

required a higher level of reliability and 

that the conditions in space affected 

electronics and hardware. After witnessing the myriad of complications 

with the Project Mercury capsules, 

Silverstein was a key proponent of 

the construction of a space environmental simulation chamber in late 

1960 to subject the entire capsule to 

simulated spaceflights.

He later explained, “[E]very piece 

of equipment that is taken aboard...

[should be] environmentally checked 

so that it can live in the environment of 

space, the total environment of space: 

the vacuum of space, the temperatures 

of space, the pressures of space; that 

is, in the fields of other components; 

that the whole ensemble put together 

is tested environmentally so as to 

operate successfully.”1

When Silverstein returned to Lewis 

Research Center (today, Glenn) as 

Center Director in the fall of 1961, work 

had just begun converting the massive 

AWT into two test chambers—one to 

simulate the vacuum of outer space; 

the other, the conditions of the upper 

atmosphere. The facility, renamed the 

Space Power Chambers (SPC), was the 

largest of only a handful of vacuum 

tanks in the United States at the time. 

The use of the tunnel’s existing infrastructure accelerated the construction 

to fill the void until larger facilities 

such as the Space Environmental 

In these two photos from 1964, the 

Centaur upper stage, equipped with two 

RL-10 engines, is lowered into the SPC’s 

Chamber Number 1 through its domed 

hatch. (Photo credit: NASA/GRC/Bill Bowles)

...these vehicles operate 

entirely in outer space 

and must be tested in an 

environment that recreates 

that setting. 

7
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

Simulation Laboratory at what is now 

Johnson Space Center were completed.

The SPC construction had just been 

completed when NASA transferred 

the Centaur upper-stage program to 

Lewis in the fall of 1962. The Agency 

had recently decided to use the new, 

unproven Centaur rocket with an Atlas 

booster to launch a series of Surveyor 

spacecraft to the lunar surface to 

explore landing sites for Apollo. As 

part of the Center’s extensive effort to 

get the temperamental vehicle ready 

for its mission, Silverstein decided to 

add a dome to the new SPC vacuum 

tank so that the stage could be stood 

up vertically inside and subjected to 

the environment found at 100 miles 

altitude. Quartz lamps simulated solar 

radiation, and a cryoshroud installed 

around the vehicle produced the low 

temperatures of space.

The Centaur’s more than two dozen 

simulated multiphase missions (without firing engines) in the SPC revealed 

that electronics cannisters did not 

require pressurization and verified the 

performance of a new static inverter. 

On 30 May 1966, an Atlas-Centaur 

successfully launched the first of 

seven Surveyor landers to the Moon. 

Centaur has gone on to launch dozens 

of probes, satellites, and observatories 

and remains active today.

Meanwhile, Silverstein made plans for 

two larger, more powerful environmental test facilities at its remote test site 

at Plum Brook Station (today known 

as Armstrong Test Facility). B-2 (currently named the In-Space Propulsion 

Facility) could not only subject a fullsize stage to the simulated vacuum, 

temperatures, and radiation of space, 

but also had the one-of-a-kind ability 

to fire rocket engines without breaking 

the vacuum. It remains the only facility in the country with this capability. 

Simultaneously, the world’s largest 

space simulation chamber (known 

today as the Space Environments 

Complex) was built at Plum Brook. 

Simulated altitudes of up to 300 miles 

can be created in the 122-foot-tall 

and 100-foot-diameter chamber. Plum 

Brook’s twin giants began operation in 

late 1969.

The Delta III second stage was prepared for testing at Plum Brook’s B-2 Facility in 

February 1994. (Photo credit: NASA)

Glenn Research Center’s 50-Plus Years of Environmental Spacecraft Testing (continued)

8
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

In December 1969, Lewis engineers initiated a multiyear program in the B-2 

facility to determine if a later-generation 

Centaur required boost pumps to start 

its engines in space. A Centaur without 

the pumps was successfully tested dozens of times in B-2’s simulated space 

environment. The eventual elimination 

of the boost pumps simplified the system and reduced vehicle cost. In the 

early 1970s, B-2 also tested a Centaur 

vehicle configured for the Titan IV 

booster. The tests verified that the stage 

could complete three-burn missions 

with long periods of coast in between. 

Titan-Centaurs launched NASA’s marquee Viking and Voyager missions in 

the mid-1970s.

In the mid-1990s, B-2 conducted hot 

firings of the new cryogenic stage 

for the Delta III launch vehicle. The 

vehicle’s pumping system underwent 

engine chilldown and ignition tests in 

the vacuum chamber in 1996. Then, in 

1998, a complete Delta III upper stage 

was installed in the facility prior to its 

maiden flight. Like the earlier Centaur 

tests, the vehicle was subjected to a 

simulated mission profile, including 

multiple engine firings. Despite its 

short career, Delta III was essential to 

the transition to the successful Delta IV 

launch vehicle.

B-2 was one of the few vacuum facilities capable of handling SpaceX’s 

large Crew Dragon vehicle. A series of 

non-propulsive tests in the summer of 

2018 verified the spacecraft’s ability to 

withstand the space environment prior 

to its first uncrewed demonstration 

flight in March 2019.

In early 2020, Glenn tested the Orion 

spacecraft for eight weeks in the vacuum, low temperatures, and radiation 

of space inside the Space Environments 

Complex. The massive chamber had 

previously primarily been used to test 

large components such as solar arrays 

and power systems. The space environment tests went exceptionally well, 

and the Orion vehicle was returned to 

Kennedy Space Center in March 2020 

to prepare for its initial launch with 

Artemis I this fall. 

Endnote

1 Abe Silverstein, interview by John Sloop, 

29 May 1974.

In December 2019, the Orion spacecraft was prepared for space environment testing at the Space Environments Complex at Plum Brook 

Station. (Photo credit: NASA/GRC/Bridget Caswell)

Glenn Research Center’s 50-Plus Years of Environmental Spacecraft Testing (continued)

9
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

Langley Research Center’s 

Contributions to Artemis

» Adapted by Rob Wyman, Langley Research Center, from an article at www.nasa.gov

J

UST AS IT DID for the Mercury 

and Gemini programs, as well 

as the Apollo missions where it 

helped tackle many of the fundamental 

challenges of landing the first humans 

on the Moon, NASA Langley Research 

Center in Hampton, Virginia, has 

made many important contributions 

to the development of today’s Artemis 

lunar exploration program.

Langley’s primary areas of involvement 

include shaping Artemis mission architecture, refining spacecraft exit and 

entry aerodynamics, building safety 

systems for astronauts, crafting electronics for instrumentation, programming robotics for in-space assembly, 

and developing business approaches for 

space commerce.

Aerodynamic Testing of the Orion Capsule

In Langley’s National Transonic Facility, 

which uses supercold nitrogen gas at high 

pressure to duplicate true-flight aerodynamics, a scale model of Orion is prepared for 

testing that will show the effects of aerodynamic pressures on the ablated heat shield. 

(Photo credit: NASA/David C. Bowman)

The Space Launch System 

Meets the Wind Tunnel

The Space Launch System aerosciences 

team at Langley worked through a series of 

wind tunnel tests to better understand the 

changing pressures and wind loads exerted 

on the Block 1B version of the rocket during 

each phase of launch. In the 14- by 22-foot 

wind tunnel, the research team introduces 

smoke into the airflow to get a better visualization of the data being collected. (Photo 

credit: NASA/David C. Bowman)

The Orion Capsule Makes a Big Splash

Tucked under Langley’s historic gantry is 

the Hydro Impact Basin where the Orion 

capsule’s landing integrity was tested for 

oceanic splashdowns. (Photo credit: NASA/

David C. Bowman)

Making Moon Landings Safer

Navigation Doppler Lidar is under development at Langley and will allow for extremely 

safe and ultra-precise descent and landings of robotic and crewed vehicles on 

the Moon and on other worlds by creating 

three-dimensional elevation maps of the 

terrain. (Image credit: NASA)

Development of the Orion 

Launch Abort System

As in this image from 1959, in which 

members of Langley’s Pilotless Aircraft 

Research Division prepared a boilerplate 

Mercury capsule and production version of 

the launch escape system for testing of a 

ground-level abort, today’s NASA Langley 

manages the development of the Launch 

Abort System for the Orion crew module. 

(Photo credit: NASA)

To find out more about this research, 

visit https://www.nasa.gov/feature/

langleys-contributions-to-artemis. 

10
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

I

N THE APOLLO ERA, the Moon was 

dry. For the Artemis generation, the 

Moon is wet. No, the amount of 

water on the Moon has not changed 

significantly since the 20th century—

it’s still drier than any desert on Earth—

but our understanding of the Moon’s 

history and the nature and distribution 

of water there has changed significantly. And before the barren Moon 

of the Apollo era, some astronomers 

believed the Moon was covered in frost 

and vegetation.

Admittedly, those astronomers were in 

the minority in the early 1900s. Even 

though William Pickering had made 

serious contributions to astronomy, 

such as the discovery of Saturn’s moon 

Phoebe as well as a determination for 

the tenuousness of the Moon’s atmosphere, some of his conclusions were 

not widely embraced. In his book 

The Moon: A Summary of the Existing 

Knowledge of Our Satellite, with a 

Complete Photographic Atlas, Pickering 

wrote that water vapor should be 

expected on the Moon “in the solid 

form, as hoar frost, in considerable 

quantities.” In addition to water ice and 

potential vegetation akin to a lichen on 

the Moon that Pickering envisioned, 

he was also an advocate for the theory of canals on Mars, which Percival 

Lowell famously promoted. Pickering 

made arguments for preferentially 

investigating canals on the Moon 

instead of on Mars, in part because of 

the Moon’s proximity to Earth. The 

point here is not to champion Pickering 

for being somehow ahead of his time 

on the lunar water question. But the 

question remains: when did humanity 

discover water on the Moon?

By the time NASA was preparing maps 

and atlases of the Moon for Apollo, 

photography reigned supreme with the 

Ranger and Lunar Orbiter missions. 

Concerns about water did not meaningfully factor into the planning for 

the data being collected. With Artemis, 

questions about water on the Moon, 

what water ice and other volatiles can 

tell us about the Moon’s history, and 

water ice’s potential for in situ resource 

utilization on the Moon motivate 

many of the instrument payloads being 

sent to the Moon. What accounts for 

this shift?

The Moon’s history was already an 

active area of scientific debate prior to 

Artemis and 

Water on the Moon

» By James Anderson, Ames Research Center

A data visualization showing the Nobile region at the lunar South Pole. The terrain in the 

Nobile region is most suitable for the VIPER to navigate, and it will communicate about and 

characterize potential water and other resources. (Image credit: NASA’s Scientific 

Visualization Studio)

A plate from Pickering’s book The Moon, 

purporting to show ice on the lunar surface. 

(Image credit: Internet Archive/Doubleday, 

Page & Company; public domain)

11
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

Artemis and Water on the Moon (continued)

the Space Age. Historian Ron Doel 

has traced the interdisciplinary nature 

of the development of solar system 

research, including the dramatic saga 

between Gerard Kuiper and Harold 

Urey in the 1950s that disrupted 

professional collaborations between 

astronomers and chemists interested 

in the origin of the solar system, for 

which the presence and form of water 

figures prominently. The terms of that 

debate—from the theorized thermal 

evolution of the Moon to the isotopic 

abundances of protoplanetary matter—are probably more recognizable 

to lunar scientists today than, say, the 

claims about canals on Mars that 

Percival Lowell had advanced a generation earlier.

After Apollo 17, the Moon no longer 

represented a high-value target for 

further exploration, given the slate 

of deep space planetary missions and 

the development of the Space Shuttle 

Program. When NASA did return to 

the Moon in 1994, it was as a partner 

of the Defense Department on the 

Clementine mission, for which science 

was incorporated only in the very late 

stages of the mission planning. That 

mission provided a hint that there 

could be water ice at the poles of the 

Moon, but it was unclear. A few years 

later, the first competitively selected 

mission of the Discovery Program, 

Lunar Prospector, went to the Moon 

with lunar science as its primary objective. The least expensive mission of 

the Discovery program to date, Lunar 

Prospector returned data showing 

elevated hydrogen levels at the poles 

that strongly indicated water. In media 

reports, the cautious qualifying statements were often dropped, and it was 

simply reported that water had been 

discovered on the Moon. A frequent 

talking point around the time of Lunar 

Prospector was that 80 percent of the 

Moon’s surface had not been studied by 

Apollo and that the presence of lunar 

water could enable a future sustained 

presence on the Moon.

Since Lunar Prospector, the Moon’s 

surface has been mapped many times 

In the Lunar Biological Laboratory at 

Ames Research Center, Apollo 11 samples 

are studied for possible signs of life in 1969. 

Researchers certainly did not expect to find 

anything like the ice or lichen imagined by 

William Pickering decades before, but the 

field of exobiology could not pass up the 

opportunity to study the first material 

returned to Earth from elsewhere in the solar 

system that was not a meteorite. Signs of 

life more than signs of water were the focus. 

(Photo credit: NASA)

In 2019, NASA scientists at the Lunar 

Curation Laboratory at the Agency’s 

Johnson Space Center in Houston prepare 

to open an untouched rock and soil sample 

from the Moon that was returned to Earth on 

Apollo 17. This was the first time in more 

than 40 years that a pristine sample of rock 

and regolith from the Apollo era had been 

opened, setting the stage for scientists to 

practice techniques to study future samples 

collected on Artemis missions. (Photo 

credit: NASA/James Blair)

Data from the Lunar Prospector mission were used to create these images with dark blue 

and purple areas at the Moon’s poles indicating neutron emissions consistent with 

hydrogen-rich deposits. These hydrogen signatures provided stronger indications of water 

in the form of ice or hydrated minerals than evidence from the Clementine mission did earlier 

in the decade. (Image credit: NASA/USGS/Los Alamos National Laboratory. Source: 

Feldmann et al., Science, 281, 1496, 1998.)

12
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

over with a variety of instruments on 

multiple lunar missions, including 

the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter 

(LRO), still in operation since its 

launch in 2009. Piggybacking on the 

LRO launch was an inexpensive and 

innovative mission, the Lunar Crater 

Observation and Sensing Satellite 

(LCROSS), which advanced the search 

for more definitive information about 

water ice at the lunar poles by sending 

the empty upper stage of the rocket 

into a lunar crater at the South Pole, 

kicking up a vast plume of ejecta that 

the LCROSS spacecraft observed and 

flew through on its way to impact. A 

few months before LCROSS, the first 

Indian lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, 

also sent an impactor into a crater at the 

South Pole and returned data that further built upon what Lunar Prospector 

had collected. Aboard Chandrayaan-1 

was a NASA-funded instrument, the 

Moon Mineralogy Mapper, which 

returned compelling data that 

strengthened the case for water ice 

distributed across the poles in multiple 

forms, not just bound up in minerals 

in the way that a saltine cracker could 

be said to have water. Even the sunlit 

regions of the Moon have water molecules, as recently confirmed by the 

Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared 

Astronomy (SOFIA). The Moon is still 

incredibly dry compared to Earth, but 

the amount of water that seems to be 

at the poles—depending upon its form 

and how it is specifically distributed—

could be significant for future exploration. And unlike during the space 

race of the Apollo era—a geopolitical 

race between the United States and 

the Soviet Union with few examples 

of participation by other nations—

present-day NASA is developing 

Artemis with a clear emphasis on international collaboration, from developing the Artemis Accords to fostering 

international partnerships with entities like the European Space Agency, 

which is developing the service module 

for the Orion crew capsule.

In this Artemis generation, missions 

that are preparing to launch, many of 

them part of the Commercial Lunar 

Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, 

will continue to build humanity’s presence on the Moon before any humans 

return. Instruments on the Volatiles 

Investigating Polar Exploration Rover 

(VIPER) and other CLPS missions 

planned to be sent to the Moon in 

coming years will begin to verify the 

presence of lunar water in ways not 

even contemplated during Apollo. 

Water will undoubtedly be “discovered” on the Moon again, but what 

it looks like up close and whether it 

might reasonably be extracted, refined, 

bottled, and commodified remains to 

be seen. 

Artemis and Water on the Moon (continued)

This image of the Moon from NASA’s 

Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian 

Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO’s) 

Chandrayaan-1 mission shows a three-color 

composite of reflected near-infrared radiation from the Sun, illustrating the extent to 

which different materials are mapped 

across the side of the Moon that faces Earth. 

Small amounts of water and hydroxyl (blue) 

were detected on the surface of the Moon at 

various locations. This image illustrates their 

distribution at high latitudes toward the 

poles. The South Pole of the Moon is of particular interest to the Artemis Program. 

(Image credit: ISRO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/

Brown University/U.S. Geological Survey)

An artist’s concept of the completed design of NASA’s VIPER. VIPER will get a close-up 

view of the location and concentration of ice and other resources at the Moon’s South Pole, 

bringing us a significant step closer to NASA’s ultimate goal of a long-term presence on the 

Moon—making it possible to eventually explore Mars and beyond. (Image credit: NASA/

Daniel Rutter)

13
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

Precious 

Mementos 

of Apollo 17

» By Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, 

Johnson Space Center

J

AN EVANS climbed aboard a “Jolly 

Green Giant” helicopter on the 

night of 6 December 1972 for a 

chance at a better view of the rocket 

that NASA would soon launch to the 

Moon carrying her husband, Ronald 

E. Evans, one of three men who would 

be on board later that night. As the 

helicopter circled the Saturn V that 

evening, the vehicle stood out against 

the dark sky. Seeing the red, white, and 

blue flag on the rocket along with the 

words “United States” was a meaningful, 

patriotic moment for Jan: one that still 

brings tears to her eyes years later.1 She 

had been excited about Ron’s assignment and his selection to the Apollo 

17 crew but recognized that this flight 

was larger than a single mission. The 

success of this last landing on the Moon 

belonged to all Americans and symbolized what citizens had done and could 

continue to accomplish by working 

together, united behind a single goal. 

As Commander Eugene A. Cernan said, 

this was “not the end. It’s the end of 

the beginning.”2

Ron had been selected as an astronaut 

six years earlier. When Jan learned that 

he met the qualifications for the elite 

group, her husband was on the U.S.S. 

Ticonderoga f lying missions over 

Vietnam and would miss the application deadline. So Jan, his biggest 

supporter, placed a call to the head of 

Flight Crew Operations, Deke Slayton. 

Ron was interested—would he accept a 

late application? Slayton assured her he 

would.3 Ron ended up being selected 

as part of the fifth group of astronauts, 

known as the Original Nineteen: some 

of whom, like Ron, flew to the Moon, 

while others flew on Skylab and the 

Space Shuttle.

At an Apollo 17 crew press conference, 

Ron, the Command Module pilot, 

mused on his desire to be an astronaut. 

He realized he wanted to do something 

for his country and asked himself, 

“What can I do in this day and age?” 

He could not explore as Lewis and 

Clark had, but “Apollo 17 is going to 

fill that possibility,” he told reporters 

sitting in the Apollo News Center.4

The Apollo 17 crew exuded pride in 

their country and its achievements in 

space, eventually selecting America as 

the name of the Command Module. 

Wanting the designation “to mean 

something,” the crew purposefully 

named its spacecraft for the people and 

country who made the program possible through their courage, sacrifice, 

and dedication.5

As Commander Eugene A. 

Cernan said, this was “not 

the end. It’s the end of the 

beginning.”

Apollo 17 astronaut Ron Evans poses with his wife, Jan, in November 1972. (Photo credit: 

NASA)

14
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

Over the course of their training, Ron 

became known as “Captain America” 

for not only piloting their spacecraft, 

America, but for his recognized patriotism. Ron was “ecstatic” about his 

title—you might say he was over the 

Moon about it—and the media took to 

calling him by the moniker for his visible support of the country, frequently 

demonstrated by his red, white, and 

blue outfits.6

When they were first selected to the 

flight, the Evans and Cernan families 

considered how they might capture 

the excitement of Apollo 17, and their 

assignment triggered a desire to preserve the spirit of the historic flight 

through a somewhat unique medium, 

jewelry. To celebrate the crew’s accomplishments, their wives and a few 

family members would receive specially designed pieces that symbolized 

the crowning achievement of their 

careers. The pieces would be especially 

meaningful because they would also 

be flown to the Moon.

Gene and Ron began working with a 

longtime family friend of the Evanses 

at Larson’s Jeweler in Scottsdale, 

Arizona, jeweler Mike Koven. Jan and 

Ron wanted three pendants made, one 

for her and two smaller ones for their 

mothers. Jan also wanted a moonstone 

ring. Gene requested a pendant necklace for his wife, Barbara, and another 

for his daughter, Tracy. Koven set about 

designing the pieces and corresponded 

with the astronauts and their wives by 

mail. Both astronauts approved the 

final designs in July 1972.7

Jan’s pendant symbolized the excitement of the mission and Ron’s contributions. She told Koven that she 

wanted the pendant to resemble the 

shape of the Command Module and to 

include Ron’s naval aviator wings. The 

final design also includes an etching 

of the lunar terrain of Taurus-Littrow, 

where the Apollo Lunar Module would 

take off from the Moon for the last time. 

(Koven said he sketched the site from a 

photograph.) On the left-hand side of 

the pendant sits a large diamond, along 

with Ron’s wings and a modern-looking 

“17” made of 10 smaller diamonds. 

The pendant is 13/4 inches long and 

11/2 inches wide.8 The smaller pendants 

featured similar designs without the 

diamonds. Barbara Cernan’s pendant 

also featured a “17” created out of 11 

diamonds, topped with a 1-carat diamond. Tracy’s included a moonstone 

with the “17” finished in black enamel.

Jan gave Koven free rein over the design 

of her moonstone ring. The 19-carat 

stone includes three small diamonds. 

Instead of a single band, the jeweler 

chose to include several bands to give 

the piece a spherical appearance and to 

capture “the feeling of space.”9

In November, Koven shipped the 

pieces to Cape Canaveral so they could 

be included on the flight. Ron’s pieces 

made it into his personal preference kit, 

along with the couple’s wedding bands. 

Koven, a guest of the crew, traveled to 

the Cape to witness the launch in person, and the pendant and moonstone 

ring he had designed for Jan traveled 

to the lunar surface with Commander 

Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot 

Harrison H. “Jack” Schmitt.10

When the crew returned home to 

Houston, Captain America and his 

family drove from Ellington Air 

Force Base and turned down Lake 

Shore Drive, the main entrance into 

their neighborhood, where they were 

greeted by hundreds of American flags 

lining both sides of the entire street. 

People carried flags on horseback, and 

young children decorated their bikes 

and tricycles with red, white, and blue. 

Like the Evanses, their neighbors and 

friends were proud of what the crew, 

NASA, and America had accomplished.11 Jan wore the one-of-a-kind 

The Evanses’ jewelry, 

flown aboard Apollo 17 

and publicly shown here 

for the first time, reflects 

one of the ways in which 

the Apollo crews and their 

families commemorated 

their flights.

Precious Mementos of Apollo 17 (continued)

Jan Evans’s pendant and moonstone 

ring, which were flown aboard Apollo 17. 

Designed by jeweler Mike Koven, the jewelry 

symbolized the crew and their family’s 

excitement about the mission. (Photo courtesy of Jan Evans)

15
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

mementos they had commissioned, 

but, she admits, they are not everyday 

pieces. Today, she regularly dons a 

silver crew medallion that Koven also 

made for her. She also wears a cross 

that Koven crafted from Ron’s wedding 

band after he passed away in 1990.12

This December, with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 17 flight, NASA 

will celebrate the final mission of this 

historic program. But there are other 

reasons to contemplate the flight, 

including the impact the flight had 

upon the crew and its family members, 

how they saw the mission, and how 

they demonstrated their passion for 

spaceflight. The Evanses’ jewelry, flown 

aboard Apollo 17 and publicly shown 

here for the first time, reflects one of 

the ways in which the Apollo crews 

and their families commemorated their 

flights. The symbolism of the pendants 

and the ring captures the patriotism felt 

by the astronauts and their wives and 

illustrates their belief in the promise of 

the Apollo program. While Apollo is a 

well-documented engineering accomplishment, there is still much more 

to learn about the cultural and social 

influence of these flights. 

Endnotes

1 The crew officially lifted off the pad 

on 7 December at 12:33 a.m. EST. 

Geoffrey Bowman, A Long Voyage to 

the Moon: The Life of Naval Aviator and 

Apollo 17 Astronaut Ron Evans (Lincoln: 

University of Nebraska Press, 2021), 

p. 238.

2 Andrew Chaikin, A Man on the Moon: 

The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts (New 

York: Penguin Books, 1994), p. 505. 

3 The U.S.S. Ticonderoga, on which Ron 

served, also recovered the crew and their 

capsule. Chaikin, A Man on the Moon, 

pp. 499–500.

4 Apollo 17 Press Conference, 10 

November 1972, transcript, p. 3, 

Johnson Space Center (JSC) History 

Office, Houston, TX. 

5 Ibid., p. 2. 

6 Bowman, A Long Voyage to the Moon, 

p. 236; “Cmdr. Ron Evans—The First 

KU Alumnus in Space,” University of 

Kansas, https://union.ku.edu/fly-usmoon (accessed 6 September 2022).

7 Ja n Eva ns, phone conversation 

with author, 28 August 2022; Jerry 

McElfresh to John McLeaish, “Jewelry 

Made for Apollo 17 Crew,” Scottsdale 

Daily Progress (26  December 1972), 

Apollo Series, 074-31, JSC History 

Collection, UHCL, Houston, TX.

8 Jan Evans, e-mail message to author, 

29 August 2022. 

9 McElfresh to McLeaish, “Jewelry Made 

for Apollo 17 Crew”; phone conversation with Evans. 

10 Ibid.

11 Jan Evans, oral history with author, 

7  August 2003, transcript, JSC Oral 

History Project, https://historycollection.

jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/

history/oral_histories/EvansJM/

EvansJM_8-7-03.htm (accessed 26 

September 2022).

12 Phone conversation with Evans.

Precious Mementos of Apollo 17 (continued)

Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan trains for a lunar extravehicular activity in August 1972 

while his wife, Barbara, and daughter, Tracy, watch. (Photo credit: NASA)

16
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

Mississippi Test Facility’s 

Transition to the 

Post-Apollo Era

» By Jessica Herr, Stennis Space Center

NEARLY 50 YEARS AGO, on 

7 December 1972, Apollo 17, the 

final mission of the Apollo program, was launched. In the background 

of finishing the Apollo-era testing, the 

Mississippi Test Facility (MTF, now 

known as NASA’s Stennis Space Center 

[SSC]) was working on the next thing. 

Roy Estess, an engineer at MTF, was 

assigned to put together a presentation 

to convince NASA to select the facility 

for the Space Shuttle Program’s engine 

testing. In December 1970, Estess went 

into NASA Headquarters and gave his 

presentation to a board of NASA managers and spoke of the low cost of facility modifications that would be needed 

for the Space Shuttle main engine 

tests, the test experience already at the 

facility because of Apollo testing, and 

the local communities’ willingness to 

support the program. Jerry Hlass, a student at George Washington University 

working on his master’s thesis, also had 

the ear of the NASA Site Evaluation 

Board. His thesis titled “Search for a 

Role for a Large Government Facility,” 

focused on the Space Shuttle Program 

and the use of the MTF. When asked 

his opinion, Hlass, who later led the 

Mississippi facility as its director, gave 

his case for MTF. On 1 March 1971, 

it was announced that the Mississippi 

Test Facility had been selected for the 

“sea-level testing of the rocket engines 

to power the Space Shuttle.”

MTF jumped at the chance to test 

the engines that would power the 

Shuttle fleet. An effort to have Shuttle 

engines manufactured at Michoud 

Assembly Facility (MAF) in nearby 

New Orleans and tested at MTF went 

into motion. One of the companies 

entering bids for the project was the 

Lockheed Propulsion Company, which 

embraced the idea of using MAF and 

MTF to perform the work. Other 

companies putting in bids for the work 

were Thiokol Chemical Corporation, 

Aerojet Solid Propulsion Company, 

and United Technology Center.

With bids submitted, a delegation of 

elected officials, community leaders, 

and businesspeople from Louisiana and 

Mississippi began lobbying for the work 

to come to their states. In late 1973, the 

award was given to Thiokol Chemical 

Corporation. The local community 

around MAF and MTF were angered 

by the choice since just a few years earlier, MTF had been named “the nation’s 

foremost propulsion test site.”

The announcement set off a series of 

events that would shape the future of 

MTF: the protest of the solid rocket 

motor contract award to Thiokol; 

calls for “full utilization of MTF” by 

U.S. Senator John C. Stennis, U.S. 

Representative Trent Lott, and other 

Mississippi and Louisiana officials; and 

a campaign for renaming the facility 

and establishing it as an independent 

NASA installation no longer under 

the direction of Marshall Space Flight 

Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Senator Stennis spearheaded the 

movement, and on 14 June 1974, the 

Mississippi Test Facility was renamed 

the National Space Technology 

Laboratories (NSTL) and became an 

independent installation of NASA, 

reporting to NASA Headquarters. 

Stennis said the “efforts to increase the 

use of NSTL by NASA and other federal agencies [would] now be more successful than ever before.” Site Director 

Jackson Balch was pleased with the 

changes, saying “it will be kind of nice 

to be a member of the club.”

Apollo 17 launches shortly after midnight on 7 December 1972. (Photo credit: 

NASA)

17
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

News from NASA’s Centers

NASA Headquarters

Washington, DC

» By Michele Ostovar

This summer, the History Office at 

NASA Headquarters benefited from 

the efforts of four interns working 

remotely from their homes: undergraduates Sedrick Billups, Priscilla 

Foreman, and Madelyn Pollock, as 

well as Columbia University graduate 

student Aneka Kazlyna. While we 

were sorry to say goodbye to Sedrick 

as he returned to his studies at the 

University of West Alabama, we are 

pleased to welcome the remaining 

three of our summer interns back this 

fall. Priscilla and Madelyn are continuing their work part-time, while Aneka 

returns as a full-time intern working 

with both History and the NASA 

Astrobiology Program. Speaking of 

astrobiology, our newest intern, Olivia 

Reste, will also be exploring the topic 

for her internship this fall. Olivia, a 

junior at Rutgers University in New 

Brunswick, New Jersey, is a biochemistry major with minors in astrobiology and physics. Olivia, Priscilla, and 

Madelyn are working hard to generate 

engaging content for NASA History’s 

social media presence on Twitter and 

Facebook, and we look forward to 

including their research articles in the 

next edition of News & Notes.

Johnson Space Center (JSC)

Houston, TX

» By John Uri, Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, 

Sandra Johnson, and Jessica Kelly

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal’s book Making 

Space for Women: Stories from 

Trailblazing Women of NASA’s Johnson 

Space Center, published in January 

2022 by Texas A&M University Press, 

continues to receive much interest. The 

book explores how careers for women 

at JSC have changed over the years, as 

told by the women themselves through 

oral history narratives. Jennifer has 

had the opportunity to speak about 

her book at several invited venues both 

inside and outside NASA. The book 

is featured in the fall 2022 edition of 

the NASA Libraries newsletter, and a 

write-up is included in the July issue 

of Stennis Space Center’s newspaper, 

the Lagniappe.

The JSC History Office continues to 

participate in oral history projects 

to capture the history of NASA’s 

Discovery Program for its upcoming 

30th anniversary. Sandra Johnson 

Just a year later, on 24 June 1975, a brief, but very important event occurred at the newly independent site, the first 

ignition test of a Space Shuttle main engine. Lasting just a 

second, it marked the return to propulsion testing for NSTL 

and opened the door for testing projects to follow, including 

the current engine tests that will eventually carry humans 

farther into space than ever before. 

Source information for this article comes from Way Station 

to Space: A History of the John C. Stennis Space Center, by 

Mack R. Herring.

 Technicians install Space Shuttle flight 

engine 2007 into the A-1 test stand on 

13 April 1979. (Photo credit: NASA/SSC)

Mississippi Test Facility’s Transition to the Post-Apollo Era (continued)

18
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

and Erik Conway, the Jet Propulsion 

Laboratory (JPL) historian, are conducting interviews that will serve as 

material for a comprehensive website that will celebrate the program’s 

milestone. Thus far, the interviews 

conducted have been with Discovery 

Program management, project and science managers, and principal investigators involved in the Discovery Program 

missions. The interviews will continue 

into FY 2023.

Sandra and James Anderson, the Ames 

Research Center (ARC) Historian, 

kicked off a new project to capture 

oral histories from the Volatiles 

Investigating Polar Exploration Rover 

(VIPER) resource mapping mission 

project team. On its planned 100-day 

mission on the Moon, the robot will 

use a specialized drill and spectrometers on board to look for concentrations 

of water ice that could be harvested on 

future exploration missions to sustain 

a human presence on the Moon and 

potentially other celestial bodies. Once 

the robot is transported to the Moon’s 

South Pole region by commercial partners through the Commercial Lunar 

Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, 

the mission will represent the largest 

payload delivered so far by that cooperative program. The oral histories are 

expected to continue into the next fiscal year and include sessions with team 

members across the Agency.

The JSC History Office also continues 

its involvement with several presentations and publications. Jennifer RossNazzal and Steve Garber at NASA 

Headquarters have continued their 

work on a chapter in an upcoming 

book entitled Stars in Space: Makers 

of the United States Space Force that 

aims to use the experiences of selected 

leaders in space to enhance the understanding of character and leadership in 

military space.

The JSC History Office’s spring intern, 

Jessica Kelly, returned for the summer 

semester and completed her assigned 

work creating metadata for the existing 

scanned content of the JSC History 

Collection using a template created by 

Goddard Space Flight Center archivists 

and standards provided by the NASA 

acting Chief Archivist for ingesting 

into Archivematica and AtoM. She also 

wrote guidelines and procedures for 

future interns working on this project 

and was a valuable asset to the team. 

We were sad to see Jessica’s time with 

us come to an end, but she is now an 

intern at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight 

Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, working with the acting Chief Archivist. 

Our loss is Goddard’s gain. 

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal’s book Making Space for Women is featured in the current edition 

of the NASA Libraries newsletter. (Image credit: NASA/Michael Pritz)

STAY UP 

TO DATE

WITH NASA HISTORY’S EVENTS 

AND PUBLICATIONS

SIGN UP FOR OUR LISTSERV AT 

https://history.nasa.gov/listserv.html

News from NASA’s Centers (continued)

19
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

Remembering 

JFK’s Moon 

Landing Speech 

at Rice University

» By John Uri, Johnson Space Center

ON 12 SEPTEMBER 1962, President 

John F. Kennedy addressed a 

large crowd at Rice University in 

Houston during a two-day tour of space 

facilities across the country. During the 

speech, the President recommitted the 

nation to the Moon landing goal he had 

proposed to Congress in May 1961. In 

the intervening 16 months, NASA had 

made rapid and significant progress 

toward achieving that goal. The Agency 

had established new Field Centers; 

started new spaceflight programs; and 

begun designing, building, and testing 

some of the hardware that led to the 

fulfillment of President Kennedy’s goal, 

the first human Moon landing in July 

1969. Impressed by the progress he saw 

during his two-day tour, the President 

felt confident to recommit the nation 

to the Moon landing goal.

The morning of 12 September, the 

motorcade brought the President to 

Rice University. Kenneth S. Pitzer, 

president of Rice University, escorted 

President Kennedy into the football 

stadium and introduced him to the 

assembled crowd of 40,000 people. 

Classes at Rice had not yet resumed 

for the fall term, but first-year students had arrived for orientation and 

attended the ceremony, along with 

schoolchildren bused in from around 

Houston for the event. In the speech

officially titled the “Address at Rice 

University on the Nation’s Space Effort,” 

President Kennedy repeated comments 

he had made in Huntsville and Cape 

Canaveral that although the Soviet 

Union had taken the initial lead in the 

space race, the United States space program had made bold strides to catch up 

and that he intended America to take 

the lead in the coming years. Linking 

this forward progress with where he 

spoke, Kennedy said, “...this city of 

Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built 

by those who waited and rested and 

wished to look behind them.” He continued, “We set sail on this new ocean 

because there is new knowledge to be 

gained...and used for the progress of 

all people.” The President addressed 

those who doubted the Moon landing 

goal, saying, “But why, some say, the 

moon? Why choose this as our goal? 

And they may well ask why climb the 

highest mountain. Why, 35 years ago, 

fly the Atlantic?” In a line not in the 

original speech, he added his own 

penciled-in question, “Why does Rice 

President John F. Kennedy arrives in 

Rice University’s football stadium. (Photo 

courtesy of Woodson Research Center, 

Fondren Library, Rice University)

President Kennedy addresses a crowd in Rice University’s stadium, reaffirming his support for America’s space program, including landing a man on 

the Moon. (Photo credit: NASA/JSC)

20
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

play Texas?” that drew so much cheering it nearly drowned out his next point, 

perhaps the most often-remembered 

of the speech. Prepared to answer his 

own question, he eloquently reaffirmed 

the commitment he had made before 

Congress in May 1961:

We choose to go to Moon in this 

decade and do the other things, 

not because they are easy but 

because they are hard; because 

that goal will serve to organize 

and measure the best of our 

energies and skills, because 

that challenge is one that we 

are willing to accept, one we 

are unwilling to postpone, and 

one we intend to win, and the 

others, too.

To close his speech, the President 

referred to British mountaineer George 

Mallory, who, when asked why he 

wanted to climb Mount Everest, replied, 

“Because it is there.” President Kennedy 

concluded, “Well, space is there, and 

we’re going to climb it, and the moon 

and the planets are there, and new hopes 

for knowledge and peace are there. And, 

therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s 

blessing on the most hazardous and 

dangerous and greatest adventure on 

which man has ever embarked.”

Over the decades, Rice University has 

maintained strong ties with NASA, 

establishing the nation’s first dedicated 

space science department in 1963 

and the Rice Space Institute (RSI) in 

2000. Rice counts 15 astronauts among 

its alumni, as well as former NASA 

Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who, in 

April 2019, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, the 

fulfillment of President Kennedy’s challenge to the nation, gave a speech outside Rice Stadium and unveiled a plaque 

commemorating the site of President 

Kennedy’s 1962 historic speech.

On 12 September 2022, JSC and Rice 

University commemorated the 60th 

anniversary of President Kennedy’s 

speech with a public event in the university’s stadium. Reminiscent of the 

event in 1962, thousands of schoolchildren from around Houston attended 

the ceremony. The world has changed 

dramatically in the past 60  years, 

but the nation once again finds itself 

boldly committed to returning astronauts to the Moon. This time, the 

Artemis program will land the first 

woman and the first person of color 

on the Moon, leading to a permanent 

presence on the lunar surface as a 

stepping-stone to exploration missions 

to Mars. As a parallel to the event in 

1962, Rice University President Reggie 

DesRoches, along with RSI Director 

David Alexander, introduced the event 

and provided their perspective on 

the anniversary of the speech. NASA 

Administrator Bill Nelson and JSC 

Director Vanessa E. Wyche recalled 

President Kennedy’s words, challenging the nation to accomplish the hard 

things like the Moon landing, and 

reflected on how those words are still 

relevant today as the nation once again 

prepares to set sail on the new ocean 

to gain new knowledge for all humanity, this time with the participation of 

international partners and commercial 

entities, to achieve these goals. 

Top: A view of the crowd in Rice stadium 

during the President’s address. (Photo 

credit: Robert Knudsen, White House 

Photographs) Bottom: Kennedy and his 

motorcade depart the Rice University stadium. (Images courtesy of the JFK Library)

Video of President John F. Kennedy’s 

1962 speech plays above the stage of the 

commemoration event. (Photo credit: NASA/

JSC/James Blair)

Remembering JFK’s Moon Landing Speech at Rice University (continued)

21
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

Other Aerospace History News

American Astronautical Society (AAS) History Committee

» By Michael Ciancone, Chair

2021 Emme Award for 

Astronautical Literature 

The Emme Award, named for NASA’s 

first historian, Eugene M. Emme, recognizes outstanding books that advance 

public understanding of astronautics 

based on originality, scholarship, and 

readability. The Emme Award Panel, 

composed of Dr. Rick Sturdevant and 

Dr. Jennifer Levasseur and chaired by 

Dr. Don Elder, guided the review of 

submitted and solicited titles. 

The recipient of the 2021 Emme 

Award is The Burning Blue (Holt 

Publishing), by Kevin Cook. 

2022 Ordway Award for Sustained 

Excellence in Spaceflight History

The Ordway Award is named in memory of Frederick I. Ordway III (1927–

2014), human spaceflight advocate and 

chronicler of the history of rocketry 

and space travel. The award recognizes 

exceptional, sustained efforts to inform 

and educate on spaceflight and its history through one or more media, such 

as 1) writing, editing, or publishing; 

2) preparation and/or presentation of 

exhibits; or 3) production for distribution through film, television, art, or 

other nonprint media. The award is 

managed by the Ordway Panel of the 

AAS History Committee. Members 

of the Panel are Michael Ciancone 

(chair), Robert Godwin, Dr. Valerie 

Neal, Ron Miller, Robert Pearlman 

(2021 recipient), and Dr. Asif Siddiqi 

(2021 recipient).

The 2022 recipients of the Ordway 

Award are as follows. They will be recognized for this award at the Goddard 

Memorial Symposium in March 2023.

Andrew Chaikin is recognized for his 

role in reintroducing and popularizing space exploration history through 

his celebrated books and articles. His 

work focusing on the Apollo astronauts 

has been credited with reigniting the 

public’s interest in the Moon landings 

25 years after the last step was taken off 

the lunar surface. Chaikin is perhaps 

best known as the author of A Man 

on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo 

Astronauts, which has been widely held 

as the definitive account of the first 

Moon missions. Published in 1994, the 

book served as the primary basis for 

Tom Hanks’s 12-part HBO miniseries, 

From the Earth to the Moon.

Pamela Lee is one of the most respected 

artists specializing in space travel and 

astronomy. She was a founding member of the International Association of 

Astronomical Artists, an organization 

representing space artists from around 

the world, and has long been a member 

of the NASA Fine Art Program. She 

has specialized in depicting historic 

events and people. Her paintings have 

flown on the Space Shuttle and Mir, 

and they have been carried to Mars by 

the Phoenix Mars Lander and the Mars 

96 Lander. Lee has been active in using 

art to promote international education 

and cooperation.

International Academy of 

Astronautics History Series

Univelt has published the last two volumes in the International Academy of 

Astronautics (IAA) History Series that 

fall under their publishing arrangement with AAS: Proceedings of the 52nd 

History Symposium of the International 

Academy of Astronautics (IAA), edited 

by Hannes Mayer, and Proceedings 

of the 53rd History Symposium of the 

International Academy of Astronautics 

(IAA), edited by Otfrid G. Liepack. 

The AAS would like to recognize 

Dr. Rick Sturdevant for his service as 

Series Editor since 2009, during which 

time we have published 22 volumes in 

the series. The AAS would also like to 

acknowledge the decades-long Univelt 

publishing effort under the stewardship of Horace and Robert Jacobs.

22
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

Call for Proposals for Policy History Conference in June 2023

» By Donald Critchlow, Arizona State University Katzin Family Professor of History

The Institute for Political History, the 

Journal of Policy History, and the newly 

established Arizona State University 

Center for American Institutions are 

hosting the Policy History Conference 

in Columbus, Ohio, on 7–9 June 2023.

Panel and paper proposals on all topics regarding American political and 

policy history, political development, 

and comparative historical analysis are 

currently being accepted. Complete 

sessions, including two or three presenters with chair/commentator(s), and 

individual paper proposals are welcome. 

Participants may appear only once as a 

presenter in the program. The deadline 

for submission is 31 December 2022.

Proposals for papers must be submitted 

using the web form.

Application Deadline Approaching for the Blumberg Chair

Applications are currently being 

accepted from distinguished scholars for 

the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library 

of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, 

Exploration, and Scientific Innovation. 

As a partnership between NASA’s 

Astrobiology Program and the Library 

of Congress, the Blumberg Chair, an 

annually selected position, supports a 

scholar in the sciences, humanities, or 

social sciences to take up residence in 

the Library’s John W. Kluge Center.

The Blumberg Chair creates an opportunity to research the range and complexity of societal issues related to how 

life begins and evolves and to examine 

philosophical, religious, literary, ethical, legal, cultural, and other concerns 

arising from scientific research on the 

origin, evolution, and nature of life.

Within the parameters of NASA’s 

mission, a Chair might also seek to 

investigate how innovative quests for 

fundamental understanding may lead 

to major developments for the betterment of society. Barry Blumberg, for 

whom the Chair is named, conducted 

groundbreaking research addressing 

a simple but fundamental question: 

Why do some people get sick while 

others, exposed to the same environment, remain healthy? That this work 

unexpectedly led to the discovery of 

the hepatitis B virus, the development 

of a vaccine, and the awarding of the 

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 

illustrates the potential for unconventional thinking about fundamental 

questions to yield great rewards. Using 

methodologies from the history and 

sociology of science; the philosophy 

of science; legal, political, and cultural history; and other disciplines, a 

Chair might study and tell the story 

of how a basic research initiative led 

to completely unexpected discoveries 

and applications.

Completed applications are due by 

15 October 2022. For further information, please consult the Kluge 

Center’s Web page:  https://www.

loc.gov/programs/john-w-klugecenter/chairs-fellowships/chairs/

blumberg-nasa-chair-in-astrobiology/.

Pwyll Crater on Europa as imaged by the Galileo spacecraft in March 1998.

Other Aerospace History News (continued)

23
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

Submissions Sought for Spaceflight History Journal Quest

» By Christopher Gainor, Quest editor

The academic peer-reviewed journal 

dedicated to the history of spaceflight, Quest: The History of Spaceflight 

Quarterly, is about to begin its 30th 

year of publication. Featuring historical articles, oral history interviews, and 

book reviews about the history of space 

exploration relating to space programs 

from around the world, Quest is seeking articles about spaceflight history 

for its upcoming issues. Articles can be 

submitted to Quest editor Christopher 

Gainor. Additionally, Quest is looking 

for reviews of books on spaceflight history. If you are interested in reviewing 

books for Quest or know someone who 

is, please contact the editor. Those who 

contribute an article receive four free 

issues of Quest, and each published 

book review gets the reviewer one free 

issue of Quest.

Quest is also seeking entries for the 

2022 Sacknoff Prize for original 

research in spacef light history by 

undergraduate or graduate students. 

The deadline for submitting articles 

for this prize for 2022 is 30 November. 

Submission instructions are available at https://spacehistory101.com/

space-history-resources/sacknoff-prize/.

Comments or suggestions about future 

directions for Quest are always welcome. To subscribe or find more information, visit https://spacehistory101.

com/about-quest/.

Call for Papers for Discovery@30, 

New Frontiers@20: A Symposium on 

the History of NASA’s Discovery and 

New Frontiers Programs

» By Brian Odom, Marshall Space Flight Center

Date: 12–13 October 2023

Location: Washington, DC (Location TBD)

Congress approved NASA’s Discovery 

Program in 1993, initiating a new era 

of lower-cost, competed missions to 

explore the solar system. Like NASA’s 

older Explorer program of astronomy 

and astrophysics missions, these missions were to be developed and led by 

principal investigators. In 2002, based 

on the model of Discovery but recognizing a need for medium-class science 

missions to tackle questions identified 

in the Decadal Survey, NASA initiated 

the New Frontiers Program. Over the 

past 30 years, missions from these 

two programs have transformed our 

understanding of our solar system and 

have accomplished historic firsts. They 

have also redefined the role of science 

and scientists in the development of 

planetary science missions, even as this 

willingness to experiment with innovative management approaches created a 

tension with an often risk-averse NASA.

The NASA History Office and the 

Smithsonian’s National Air and Space 

Museum invite proposals for papers to 

be presented at a two-day symposium 

to be held 12–13 October 2023 in 

Washington, DC. We welcome diverse 

voices and perspectives to examine 

the history of the Discovery and New 

Frontiers Programs, their successes and 

failures, and their impact on knowledge 

and the practice of planetary science. 

Artist’s concept of the 

Juno probe, the New 

Frontiers Program mission 

that has been orbiting 

Jupiter since 2016. 

(Image credit: NASA)

Other Aerospace History News (continued)

24
NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES Volume 39, Number 3 • Fall 2022

The symposium will be a combination 

of panel discussions, keynote talks, and 

group discussion. The intention is to 

publish an anthology of selected papers.

Potential topics for papers include, but 

are not limited to the following themes:

• Why We Explore. W hat do 

Discovery and New Frontiers missions tell us about our motivations 

for exploration?

• Societal Impact. What have the 

results of Discovery and New 

Frontiers missions meant for science 

and society?

• Origin and Impact. What are 

the benefits and challengers of the 

Discovery and New Frontiers models of exploration?

• Indigenous Perspectives. What 

has the indigenous experience in the 

field been and how might further 

participation inspire new understandings of and approaches to solar 

system exploration?

• Firsts and Milestones. What contributions have Discovery and New 

Frontiers missions played in defining 

the timeline of exploration?

• Risk and Reward. What is the role 

of the principal investigator and 

what challenges do they face? 

• Major Discoveries. How have 

Discovery and New Frontiers missions surprised us?

• Technological Evolution. How 

have the fields of robotics and systems engineering changed in the last 

30 years? How have these changes 

made new missions/capabilities 

possible?

• Commercial and International 

Perspectives. What impact have 

commercial and international participation had on the programs?

• The Missions of Tomorrow. What’s 

next for the Discovery and New 

Frontiers Programs?

Submission Procedure

If you wish to present a paper, please 

send the title, an abstract of no more 

than 400 words, and a short biography 

or curriculum vitae, including affiliation, by 1 May 2023 to Dr. Brian C. 

Odom, NASA’s Acting Chief Historian. 

Questions about the symposium are 

also welcome. 

Upcoming Meetings

19–22 OCTOBER 2022

2022 Oral History Association 

Annual Meeting

Los Angeles, California

https://www.oralhistory.org/

annual-meeting/

10–13 NOVEMBER 2002

Society for the History of 

Technology Annual Meeting

New Orleans, Louisiana

https://www.historyoftechnology.org/

17–20 NOVEMBER 2022

2022 History of Science Society 

(HSS) Annual Meeting 

Chicago, Illinois

https://hssonline.org/page/hss22

7–10 DECEMBER 2022

Joint meeting of the Society 

for Social Studies of Science 

(4S) and ESOCITE (Asociación 

Latinoamericana de Estudios Sociales 

de la Ciencia y la Tecnología) 

Cholula, Mexico 

https://www.4sonline.org/meeting/

5–8 JANUARY 2023

American Historical Association 

137th Annual Meeting

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

https://www.historians.org/

annual-meeting

23–27 JANUARY 2023

2023 American Institute of 

Aeronautics and Astronautics 

(AIAA) SciTech Forum 

National Harbor, Maryland, 

and online

https://www.aiaa.org/scitech

Other Aerospace History News (continued)

25
EXPLORE

New Titles 

in the NASA 

History Series

COMING SOON

NACA to NASA to Now 

by Roger D. Launius

A History of Near-Earth 

Objects Research 

by Erik M. Conway, Donald K. 

Yeomans, and Meg Rosenburg

The Wind and Beyond

Volume III: Other Paths, 

Other Flyways

James R. Hansen and 

Jeremy R. Kinney, eds.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NASA Headquarters

300 E Street SW 

Washington, DC 20546

www.nasa.gov

Flickr

nasacommons

Facebook

@NASAHistoryOffice

Twitter

@NASAhistory

FOLLOW

NASA History 

on Social Media

NASA HISTORY NEWS&NOTES

Newsletter Editor and Graphic Designer » Michele Ostovar

Copyeditor » Lisa Jirousek

DOWNLOAD this and other recent 

editions of News & Notes at 

http://history.nasa.gov/histnews.htm.

Apollo 17 scientist-astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt heads toward a rock 

on the lunar surface to retrieve a sample. (Photo credit: NASA)