Drawing Benefits: The USIA’s Space Race Message and the Animators Who Brought It to Life

It’s time for us to return to one of our favorite topics—Cartoons! And not just any cartoons, but the animation produced for the United States Information Agency (USIA). You may already have joined us for our exploration of anti-Communist Mexican cartoons, animation and animatics by the “Walt Disney” of Thailand, or this psychedelic symbolic history … Continue reading Drawing Benefits: The USIA’s Space Race Message and the Animators Who Brought It to Life

Mapping the Moon

RG 77: Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Lunar Maps, 1961–1962 (NAID 1077479) On April 3, 2023, NASA announced that humans are soaring back to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years, since the return of Apollo 17 in 1972. Four astronauts, Americans, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, … Continue reading Mapping the Moon

Images of the Week: NASA Digital Images

This week I'm highlighting new digital images transferred from NASA that will soon be available in our research room and eventually uploaded into OPA. The four series, 255-AMP, ASTP, STS, and GRC, cover digital surrogates created from the original still film from the Apollo missions, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and the Shuttle missions. In addition, … Continue reading Images of the Week: NASA Digital Images

This Week in Universal News: Apollo 1 Disaster

On January 27, 1967, the first Apollo mission ended in disaster. Fire broke out during a launch rehearsal, killing pilots Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjEnIqcMQ3I From the release sheet: ASTRONAUT DISASTER Apollo astronauts Roger Chaffee, Edward White, and Gus Grissom are all killed in a flash-fire aboard their grounded space capsule. Investigators … Continue reading This Week in Universal News: Apollo 1 Disaster