( NASA officially credits the image to the entire Apollo 17 crew.

A NASA multi-center Technology Applications Assessment Team led from the Johnson Spaceflight Center, has as of January 2011 described " Nautilus-X ", a concept study for a multi-mission space exploration vehicle useful for missions beyond low earth orbit ( LEO ), of up to 24 months duration for a crew of up to six.

* 1965 – Launch of Gemini 4, the first multi-day space mission by a NASA crew.

* 1965 – NASA launches Gemini 3, the United States ' first two-man space flight ( crew: Gus Grissom and John Young ).

* 1973 – Skylab program: NASA launches Skylab 4 with a crew of three astronauts from Cape Canaveral, Florida for an 84-day mission.

United States Patent and Trademark Office Some of the highlights of McCulloh ’ s inventions inspired NASA's new X-38 crew rescue vehicle ( NASA X-38 ).

The first flight of Columbia ( STS-1 ) was commanded by John Young, a Gemini and Apollo veteran who was the ninth person to walk on the Moon in 1972, and piloted by Robert Crippen, a rookie astronaut originally selected to fly on the military's Manned Orbital Laboratory ( MOL ) spacecraft, but transferred to NASA after its cancellation, and served as a support crew member for the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz missions.

A NASA graph shows the relationship between the survival of a crew of astronauts and the amount of redundancy ( engineering ) | redundant equipment in their spacecraft ( the " MM ", Mission Module ).

** NASA announces the crew for the Apollo 7 space mission ( first manned Apollo flight ): Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Donn F. Eisele, and R. Walter Cunningham.

* March 23 – Gemini 3: NASA launches the United States ' first 2-person crew ( Gus Grissom, John Young ) into Earth orbit.

According to the Vision for Space Exploration, the next manned NASA program was to be Project Constellation with its Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles and the Orion Spacecraft ; however, the Constellation program was never fully funded, and in early 2010 the Obama administration asked Congress to instead endorse a plan with heavy reliance on the private sector for delivering cargo and crew to LEO.

Yet Glenn resigned from the NASA Astronaut Corps on January 30, 1964, well before even the first Gemini crew was assigned.

On February 20, 2012, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Friendship 7 flight, Glenn was surprised with the opportunity to speak with the orbiting crew of the International Space Station while Glenn was on-stage with NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden at Ohio State, where the public affairs school is named for him.

Frank Frederick Borman, II ( born March 14, 1928 ) is a retired NASA astronaut, best remembered as the Commander of Apollo 8, the first mission to fly around the Moon, making him, along with fellow crew mates Jim Lovell and Bill Anders, the first of only 24 humans to do so.

On November 13, 2008, Anders and fellow Apollo 8 crew members Frank Borman and Jim Lovell appeared on the NASA TV channel to discuss the Apollo 8 mission.

) While not a member of the NASA Astronaut Corps, McAuliffe was to be part of the STS-51-L crew, and would conduct experiments and teach lessons from space.

In early 2010, NASA awarded Blue Origin US $ 3. 7 million to work on an advanced technology, which detaches a crew cabin from its launcher if the shuttle malfunctions.

* Soichi Noguchi: JAXA astronaut ; NASA STS-114 crew member

On August 14, 1997, their song " You Will Go to the Moon " was used by NASA to wake the crew of STS-85.

A five-month NASA investigation fully exonerated Chawla by identifying errors in software interfaces and the defined procedures of flight crew and ground control.

It was attended by 6, 000 NASA employees and 4, 000 guests, as well as by the families of the crew.

When the mission finally did lift off the pad, an O-ring seal failure destroyed the shuttle 73 seconds into the flight, killing Scobee and the other six members of the crew ; the tragedy, viewed live on national television, prompted several days of national mourning, as well as a major shakeup at NASA.

As a consequence, both Engle and Truly were rookies during STS-2 ( Engle had flown the X-15 above and so had earned USAF astronaut wings, but was still considered a NASA rookie ), constituting the first all-rookie crew since Skylab 4.

Following STS-2, NASA policy held that the commander had to be an astronaut who had already flown in space, making this the last all-rookie crew of a NASA mission.

In a 2001 report, NASA found the ozone thinning over Antarctica had remained the same thickness for the previous three years, however in 2003 the ozone hole grew to its second largest size.

Warning, however, that the NASA satellite images indicated the Arctic may have entered a " death spiral " caused by climate change, Professor Mark Serreze, a sea ice specialist at National Snow and Ice Data Center ( NSIDC ), USA, said: " The passages are open.

Since 1996, however, the collection has also included oral histories of senior NASA administrators and officials, astronauts, and project managers, part of a broader project to document the lives of key agency individuals.

In 1978, the NASA SETI program was heavily criticized by Senator William Proxmire, and funding for SETI research was removed from the NASA budget by Congress in 1981, however, funding was restored in 1982, after Carl Sagan talked with Proxmire and convinced him of the program's value.

NASA had taken all the original tapes and erased them for use on subsequent missions ; however, the Apollo 11 Tape Search and Restoration Team formed in 2003 tracked down the highest quality footage among the converted recordings of the first broadcast, pieced together the best footage, then contracted a specialist film restoration company to enhance the degraded black-and-white film and convert it into digital format for archival records.

Persistent site technical problems, however, and a joint decision by the Air Force and NASA to consolidate Shuttle operations at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, following the Challenger tragedy in 1986, resulted in the official termination of the Shuttle program at Vandenberg on December 26, 1989.

Project Horizon, however, was rejected, and the Saturn program was transferred to NASA.

Upsilon Andromedae A was ranked 21st in the list of top 100 target stars for the NASA Terrestrial Planet Finder mission, which has, however, been reported to have been cancelled as of 2011.

NASA was not in the business of applying Rogallo's family of airfoils to personal aircraft such as kites, hang gliders, and powered light aircraft ; however what was already in the Paresev series of aircraft provided all the fundamental mechanics that could be simplified to lighter personal aircraft.

Neither of the crew encountered any problems, however, contrary to NASA doctors ' concerns about their landing upright — as opposed to on their backs, as in Mercury — after four days in space.

Another change of direction created uncertainty in 2010, however, when President Obama and Congress declared the end of the Vision for Space Exploration and sought to chart a new course for human space flight and NASA.

Kálmán had more success in presenting his ideas, however, while visiting Stanley F. Schmidt at the NASA Ames Research Center in 1960.

Within hours of the failure of the second quad, however, NASA had decided to cancel the rescue mission.

NASA did, however, have proposals for water-launched rockets ( the Sea Dragon and Nova ).

SpaceX did not participate during the first round, however during the second round of the program NASA awarded SpaceX with a contract worth $ 75 million to further develop their launch escape system, test a crew accommodations mock-up and to further progress the Falcon 9 / Dragon crew transportation design.

The naming contest rules, however, state that although the poll results will be taken into account, NASA has ultimate discretion in choosing an appropriate name for the node.

This was followed by the talks between NASA and Intercosmos in the 1970s about a " Shuttle-Salyut " program to fly Space Shuttle missions to a Salyut space station, with later talks in the 1980s even considering flights of the future Soviet shuttles from the Buran programme to a future US space station – this " Shuttle-Salyut " program never materialized however during the existence of the Soviet Intercosmos program.

With the creation of the USAF Officer Aircrew Badge ( an unrated award ), however, the Navigator-Observer Badge is now issued to otherwise unrated officers who complete NASA Mission Specialist training, with the aeronautical rating of Observer.

Mostly however, the Gemini 4 attempts at rendezvous were unsuccessful largely because NASA engineers had yet to learn the orbital mechanics involved in the process.

It involved multiple flybys of Io while in orbit around Jupiter ; however, this mission was not selected for Phase A study by NASA, and remains a mission concept.

NASA officials denied the scientists ’ claims shortly after they were released, however, and one of the scientists, Carol Stoker, backed off from her initial assertions.

In January 2002, however, NASA abruptly cancelled this mission, mainly due to concerns about its price tag which grew from $ 160 million to $ 220 million.