A Blast from the Past
- By Sara Mitchell
- February 15, 2013
- Comments Off on A Blast from the Past
The past few weeks have seen the release of several fantastic space-themed videos. You may have seen them as they made the rounds on Twitter or Tumblr, but I wanted to take a moment to highlight three that take a nostalgic look back at NASA’s missions and personnel in the 1970s and 1980s.
We’ll start with this TED-Ed animated video narrated by Astronaut Jerry Carr, commander of Skylab 4 (the final mission to Skylab) from November 16, 1973 to February 8, 1974. In this video, he talks about his time with NASA, which didn’t take him directly from basic training to a flight crew – in fact, he spent several years shadowing and supporting Apollo operations while he waited for a chance to go into orbit. I especially enjoyed his stories about working on Apollo 8 and 12, each of which definitely had some stressful moments but ended up as highly successful milestones in NASA history.
Next up, we’ve got a gorgeous video from director Mischa Rozema about Voyager 1, which launched in 1977 to study the outer planets of the solar system. It has since flown farther away from the Sun than any other manmade object – in fact, it recently crossed into a new region at the edge of the solar system that scientists believe may directly border interstellar space. If this is correct, Voyager 1 could soon become the first manmade object to leave the solar system entirely. Voyager 1 and 2 (which launched 16 later and holds the record for the longest continuously operated spacecraft) have been amazing workhorses, with instruments lasting well beyond their initial 5-year lifetimes. This video, which is more artistic than scientific, imagines all of the things that Voyager 1 may have seen during its 35 years zooming through space, and all of the experiences that humanity has had as well. The imagery in this video is incredibly cinematic, and it’s well worth watching in full-screen.
This last video, “Eyes on the Stars,” was created by StoryCorps to share stories from the life of Astronaut Ron McNair, a member of the Space Shuttle Challenger’s last flight crew. His brother, Carl, recounts Ron’s youth in South Carolina in the 1950s and 1960s, dealing with segregated libraries and watching Star Trek. It’s a superb example of someone who followed his dreams and didn’t accept societal norms. He became the second African American to go into space, flying on STS-41L in 1984.
