NASA History Division

An extensive site covering the history of NASA's aeronautical and space programs. Materials include photographs, flight communications transcripts, essays, timelines and chronologies, policy documents, biographies, and much more. "Aeronautics" includes flight research centers, flight research projects (such as the lifting body program and the X-1 that first broke the sound barrier), and the X-15 project. "Biographies" includes all present and former astronauts. "Human spaceflight" offers extensive material, including essays, technical information, and other material on the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and Space Shuttle projects. The Apollo Program includes the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, an extensive site that provides corrected transcripts of recorded conversations between lunar surface crews and mission control with commentary from the site editor and 10 of the astronauts who walked on the moon. The same is available for Apollo 12, 15, and 16 Flight Journals. Reference material includes more than 50 historical policy documents including NASA's 1959 Long Range Plan and the 1986 Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. There are more than 30 timelines and chronologies.

The photo and video section has video clips from the Apollo missions including lunar surface exploration. The massive Johnson Space Center Digital Image Collection has a searchable database of more than 9,000 NASA press release photos from the manned space program (Project Mercury to the Space Shuttle). "Space science" includes descriptive information and technical data on all planetary exploration projects from Mariner and Pioneer to Voyager and Galileo, as well as the lunar probe series Ranger and Surveyor. "NASA History for Kids" includes more than 25 links to sites for elementary and middle school students' research. With a wealth of both primary source material and secondary source information this site is an outstanding resource for teaching or researching the history of aeronautics and astronautics and the history of U.S. science and technology in the 20th century.