Laboratory Gallery

Proposed USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory, 1960. Creator: NASA

Proposed USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory, 1960. Concept image of the United States Air Force's proposed Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) that was intended to test the military usefulness of having humans in orbit. The station's baseline configuration was that of a two-person Gemini B spacecraft that could be attached to a laboratory vehicle. The structure was planned to launch onboard a Titan IIIC rocket. The station would be used for a month and then the astronauts could return to the Gemini capsule for transport back to Earth. The first launch of the MOL was scheduled for December 15, 1969, but was then pushed back to the fall of 1971. The program was cancelled by Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird in 1969 after the estimated cost of the program had risen in excess of $3 billion, and had already spent $1.3 billion. Some of the military astronauts selected for the program then transferred to NASA and became some of the first people to fly the Space Shuttle, including Richard Truly, who later became the NASA Administrator

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Telescope Module, Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope, 1990s. Creator: Johns Hopkins University

Original 36-inch reflecting telescope that flew on the Shuttle twice as part of the ASTRO mission. It employs a medium dispersion spectrometer at a modified prime focus. It was designed to observe faint celestial objects in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum. On the first mission in December 1990 the instrument observed over 75 astronomical sources including active galactic nuclei, quasars, variable stars and supernova remnants. After this successful mission it was modified to concentrate on the relatively unknown far-ultraviolet region and flown on Astro-2 in March 1995. Observations from this second flight provided a wealth of data including the first clear detection of the distribution of intergalactic helium left over from the Big Bang. Its calculated distribution in the pre-galaxy formation Universe fits the bubble and void geometry seen in the earliest and present universe. The telescope was manufactured by the Center for Astrophysical Sciences and the Applied Physics Lab of Johns Hopkins University. It was transferred by NASA in 2001

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Dr. Simpson in his Laboratory, 21 December 1911, (1913). Artist: Herbert Ponting

Dr. Simpson in his Laboratory, 21 December 1911, (1913). Meteorologist George Simpson (1878-1965) took detailed measurements in order to predict the best possible conditions for Scott's journey to the Pole. The final expedition of British Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912) left London on 1 June 1910 bound for the South Pole. The Terra Nova Expedition, officially the British Antarctic Expedition (1910-1913), included a geologist, a zoologist, a surgeon, a photographer, an engineer, a ski expert, a meteorologist and a physicist among others. Scott wished to continue the scientific work that he had begun when leading the Discovery Expedition to the Antarctic in 1901-04. He also wanted to be the first to reach the geographic South Pole. Scott, accompanied by Dr Edward Wilson, Captain Lawrence Oates, Lieutenant Henry Bowers and Petty Officer Edgar Evans, reached the Pole on 17 January 1912, only to find that the Norwegian expedition under Amundsen had beaten them to their objective by a month. Delayed by blizzards, and running out of supplies, Scott and the remainder of his team died at the end of March. Their bodies and diaries were found eight months later. From Scott's Last Expedition, Volume II. [Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1913]

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