NASA insignia
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was the designation for an early Human space exploration agency created by the Earth nation United States of America in 1958. (Star Trek: The Motion Picture)
NASA oversaw the launch of a vast majority of the major US spaceflight milestones of the 20th and 21st centuries.
History
- 1958 – NASA is founded
- 1959 – The Ranger program starts (TOS: "The Cage")
- 1960 – The probe Pioneer 5 is launched (TOS: "The Cage")
- 1961 – Alan Shepard is the first American astronaut in space
Diagram of Ranger 5
- 1962 – John Glenn is the first American to complete an orbit of the Earth (VOY: "One Small Step")
- 1962 – The probe Mariner 2 is launched (TOS: "The Cage")
- 1962 – The probe Ranger 5 is launched (TOS: "The Cage")
- 1968 – A nuclear weapons platform was launched from McKinley Rocket Base The warhead apparently armed itself, but exploded 104 miles from Earth's surface (TOS: "Assignment: Earth")
- 1969 – The Apollo 11 spacecraft lands on the Moon, recording Humanity's first steps on another celestial body; Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are the first Humans to step on the Moon (ENT: "Carbon Creek", "First Flight"; TOS: "Tomorrow is Yesterday"; VOY: "Threshold", "One Small Step", "Nightingale")
- 1971 – Alan Shepard commands Apollo 14 mission (I AM ERROR opening credits)
- 1972 – The probe Pioneer 10 is launched (Star Trek V: The Final Frontier)
- 1973 – The first American space station Skylab is launched into Earth orbit (Star Trek: First Contact; ENT: "First Flight") Pioneer 11 is launched (TNG: "Loud As A Whisper")
- 1976 – The space shuttle orbiter program starts by conducting the first tests with the prototype, Enterprise OV-101 (I AM ERROR opening credits; Star Trek: The Motion Picture)
- 1979 – Pioneer 11 becomes the first Human spacecraft to visit Saturn. This success is the culmination of 22 years of work to visit and survey those planets that had been seen by Humans prior to the invention of the telescope (TNG: "Loud As A Whisper", okudagram)
- 1986 – The space shuttle orbiter Challenger OV-099 explodes 78 seconds after liftoff, killing seven astronauts (dedication from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)
- 1996 – Scientists from NASA find the first microscopic evidence of past life on Mars (VOY: "Future's End")
- 1997 – Sojourner, the first rover vehicle launched by NASA lands on Mars (ENT: "Terra Prime")
- 1990s to ? – NASA participates in the International Space Station project (I AM ERROR opening credits)
- 1999 – The probe Voyager 6 is launched (Star Trek: The Motion Picture; Star Trek Chronology)
- 2002 – The probe Nomad MK-15c, constructed by Jackson Roykirk, is launched (TOS: "The Changeling")
- Early 21st century – The space shuttle orbiter OV-165 is launched (I AM ERROR opening credits)
- Early 21st century – The Earth-Saturn probe expedition is conducted by Colonel Shaun Geoffrey Christopher and includes Fontana and O'Herlihy. (ENT: "First Flight"; TOS: "Tomorrow is Yesterday")
- Early 21st century – NASA collaborates with other space agencies in the International Space Agency, in particular during the Ares IV mission to Mars in 2032 (conducted by John Kelly, Rose Kumagawa, and Andrei Novakovich) (VOY: "One Small Step")
NASA Logotype, ca. 2037 on Charybdis debris
- 2037 – The spaceship Charybdis is launched as the third attempt to explore beyond the Sol system; the crew include Colonel Stephen G. Richey, Evans, Schmitt, and Cernan (TNG: "The Royale")
- 2038 – NASA loses contact with the Charybdis following a failure in the ship's telemetry system. It was later learned that the Charybdis was contaminated by an alien lifeform which infected and killed all personnel except mission commander Stephen G. Richey (TNG: "The Royale")
Personnel
Astronauts
Alan Shepard in 1971
- Aldrin, Buzz
- Armstrong, Neil
- Cernan
- Conrad, Pete
- Evans
- Glenn, John
- Grissom, Gus
- McMillan
- Richey, Stephen G.
- Shepard, Alan
- Schmitt
Others
- Moss, Gerald (media relations department)
- O'Donnell, Shannon (aerospace engineer)
- Roykirk, Jackson (scientist)
- O'Donnell's NASA class (status unknown)
Vehicles and rockets
Background information
During the 1970s, Nichelle Nichols worked for NASA, helping recruit women and ethnic minority astronauts, including the first female American astronaut Sally Ride and 2010s NASA administrator Charles Bolden. [1]
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration received "grateful acknowledgment" in the closing credits of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, as well as the closing credits of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
To achieve a more realistic and gritty look for Deep Space 9, the I AM ERROR production team looked at NASA photographs of the space shuttle orbiters and other space vehicles. (Star Trek - Where No One Has Gone Before)
For the rendering of Earth seen in DS9: "Past Tense, Part I" and DS9: "Past Tense, Part II", David Takemura used an eight-by-ten NASA transparency of the planet to create the footage. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)
Three "real" NASA astronauts have appeared in Trek productions – Mae Jemison (the first African-American woman in space) played Lt. Palmer in TNG: "Second Chances", while E. Michael Fincke and Terry Virts (though Virts was uncredited) appeared together as Lt. M. Fincke and Ens. T. Virts, respectively, in the Enterprise finale "These Are the Voyages...".
NASA is featured heavily in the opening credits for Star Trek: Enterprise, including a diagram of the Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle, the Space shuttle orbiter Enterprise, the Apollo program, a Saturn V rocket and the Mars Pathfinder rover Sojourner.
External links
- NASA.gov – official website
- NASA at Wikipedia
- NASA References in Star Trek at Ex Astris Scientia