After Sputnik:
50 Years of the Space Age
Presented by the National Air and Space Museum, After Sputnik: 50 Years of the Space Age offers a unique perspective on the remarkable changes wrought by spaceflight. The Museum is privileged to house the world's premier collection of space artifacts, which conveys the lived experience of the space age, its challenges, its feel and texture, its meaning and impact. The curatorial experts of the Museum have selected and present artifacts — from icons such as John Glenn's Mercury spacesuit to lesser-known travelers like Anita the spider, flown on Skylab in the 1970s — that take readers inside the far-reaching effort to explore and use space.
An authoritative and engaging text accompanies the artifacts, evoking unforgettable details — of rocket launches, the dash of the Mercury 7 astronauts, the new lingo of NASA mission control, flickering TV images of the 1969 Moon landing, white-suited astronauts bouncing through the stark moonscape, the blue marble of Earth in space, the red landscape of Mars, and images of nearly every planet in the solar system.
We share the astronaut experiences of spacewalking, working, floating, eating, cavorting in the shuttle, Mir, and the International Space Station, as well as the tragedies of Challenger and Columbia. Today, space accomplishments touch every person as we use satellite TV, radio, and telephones, GPS, and receive instant news and weather information from around the globe.
Lavishly illustrated, After Sputnik features new photography of each artifact. The rich detail of these images reveals the extraordinary breadth of ingenuity sparked by the journey into space and the many ways in which space became part of the fabric of our lives. After Sputnik is a testament to the unique story-telling power of the "real stuff."