Space Travel Gallery

U-2 spy plane with fictitious NASA markings, USA, 1960. Creator: NASA

U-2 spy plane with fictitious NASA markings, USA, 1960. After Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union during a CIA spy flight on May 1, 1960, NASA issued a press release with a cover story about a U-2 conducting weather research that may have strayed off course after the pilot reported difficulties with his oxygen equipment. To bolster the cover-up, a U-2 was quickly painted in NASA markings, with a fictitious NASA serial number, and put on display for the news media at the NASA Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base on May 6, 1960. The U-2 cover story in 1956 was that it was an NACA plane to conduct high-altitude weather research. But various observers doubted this story from the beginning. Certainly the Soviets did not believe it once the aircraft began overflying their territory. The NASA cover story quickly blew up in the agency's face when both Gary Powers and aircraft wreckage were displayed by the Soviet Union, proving that it was a reconnaissance aircraft. This caused embarrassment for several top NASA officials

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Buzz Aldrin stands next to the American flag on the surface of the Moon, July 1969

Buzz Aldrin stands next to the American flag on the surface of the Moon, Apollo 11 mission, July 1969. US astronaut Edwin E "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr, lunar module pilot of the first lunar landing mission, in the Sea of Tranquility during an Apollo 11 moon walk. The footprints of the astronauts are clearly visible in the lunar soil. Astronaut Neil Armstrong, commander, took this picture with a 70mm Hasselblad lunar surface camera. The Apollo 11 Lunar Module, code named Eagle, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on board, landed in the Sea of Tranquillity on 20 July 1969. Apollo 11 was the fifth manned Apollo mission, and was the first to land on the Moon

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Two-image mosaic of Saturns Rings, seen from Voyager 1 spacecraft, 1980. Creator: NASA

Two-image mosaic of Saturn's Rings, seen from Voyager 1 spacecraft, 1980. Computer-assembled two-image mosaic of Saturn's rings, taken by NASA's Voyager 1 on 6 November 1980 at a range of 8 million kilometers (5 million miles). Approximately 95 individual concentric features in the rings can be seen. The extraordinarily complex structure of the rings is easily seen across the entire span of the ring system. The ring structure, once thought to be produced by the gravitational interaction between Saturn's satellites and the orbit of ring particles, has now been found to be too complex for this explanation alone. The 14th satellite of Saturn, discovered by Voyager 1, is seen just inside the narrow F-ring, which is less than 150 kilometers (93 miles wide)

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