Plenty of Nothing

NASA in the Time of Star Trek

Still from "Court Martial" including a framed picture of the launch of Gemini 6. Source.

NASA missions with closest Star Trek episodes:

1966/9/8             "The Man Trap" (season 1, episode 1)

1966/9/12-16      Gemini 11

1966/9/15           "Charlie X" (season 1, episode 2)

1966/11/10         "The Corbomite Manoeuvre" (season 1, episode 10)

1966/11/11-15     Gemini 12

1966/11/17          "Menagerie, Part 1" (season 1, episode 11)

1967/2/2             "Court Martial" (season 1, episode 20) (picture of Gemini 6)

1967/2/16            "Space Seed" (season 1, episode 22)

1967/2/21            Apollo 1 fire

1967/2/23            "A Taste of Armageddon" (season 1, episode 23)

1967/11/3            "I, Mudd" (season 2, episode 8)

1967/11/9            Apollo 4 (uncrewed)

1967/11/10          "Metamorphosis" (season 2, episode 9)

1967/1/19            "The Immunity Syndrome" (season 2, episode 10)

1968/1/22-23       Apollo 5 (uncrewed)

1968/2/2              "A Private Little War" (season 2, episode 11)

1968/3/29            "Assignment: Earth" (season 2, episode 26) (used footage from Apollo 4)

1968/4/4              Apollo 6 (uncrewed)

1968/10/11          "And the Children Shall Lead" (season 3, episode 4)

1968/10/11-22     Apollo 7

1968/10/18          "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" (season 3, episode 5)

1968/10/25          "Spectre of the Gun" (season 3, episode 6)

1968/12/20          "Elaan of Troyius" (season 3, episode 13)

1968/12/21-27     Apollo 8

1969/1/3              "Whom Gods Destroy" (season 3, episode 14)

1969/2/28            "The Cloud Minders" (season 3, episode 21)

1969/3/3-13         Apollo 9

1969/3/7              "The Savage Curtain" (season 3, episode 22)

1969/3/23            "All Our Yesterdays" (season 3, episode 23)

1969/5/18-26       Apollo 10

1969/6/3              "Turnabout Intruder" (season 3, episode 24)

"Charlie X", "And the Children Shall Lead", "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" and "The Savage Curtain" first aired while there were NASA astronauts in space.

1973/7/28-9/25    Skylab 3

1973/9/8              "Beyond the Furthest Star" (animated series 1, episode 1)

1973/9/15            "Yesteryear" (animated series 1, episode 2)

1973/9/22            "One of Our Planets is Missing" (animated series 1, episode 3)

1973/11/16-1974/2/8    Skylab 4

1973/11/17          "The Terratin Incident" (animated series 1, episode 11)

1973/11/24          "The Time Trap" (animated series 1, episode 12)

1973/12/1            "The Ambergris Element" (animated series 1, episode 13)

1973/12/8            "The Slaver Weapon" (animated series 1, episode 14)

1973/12/15          "The Eye of the Beholder" (animated series 1, episode 15)

1974/1/12            "The Jihad" (animated series 1, episode 16)

Nine animated episodes first went to air while there were astronauts aboard Skylab.

Karl Ludwig Harding

The lunar crater Harding is named after Karl Ludwig Harding (1765 - 1834), who discovered the minor planet Juno on this date in 1804. Source.

Chandrayaan 3

The Chandrayaan 3 lunar lander as seen by the rover Pragyaan. Source.

Domaine de Météore

France has a vineyard located in a meteor crater. Although expert opinion had long dismissed an extraterrestrial origin for the depression, recent analysis of the underlying strata has confirmed that the crater was in fact created by an iron-nickel meteorite. Read. And.

Castro / Soyuz

Fidel Castro visited the USSR in June 1972 and took the opportunity to pose inside some Soviet space hardware. This paved the way for Cuba's first cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, who flew on Soyuz 38 in 1980. Source.

Miss Baker

Memorial to Miss Baker, who flew into space aboard Jupiter missile AM-18 on this date in 1959. She went on to live to the ripe old age of 27. Before Miss Baker's flight no monkey had survived a US space launch. Alan Shepherd's flight aboard Mercury-Redstone 3 occurred just two years after hers. Source.

Skylab by Robert T. McCall

This is the fiftieth anniversary of Skylab 2, the crewed mission to the damaged Skylab module. Source.

Pale Blue Dot

The new Director of the Goddard Space Flight Center, Makenzie Lystrup, takes the oath of office with her hand on Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot. Source.

Pale Blue Dot in the library of the US Embassy in the Netherlands. Source.

H.W.M. Olbers

Heinrich William Matthias Olbers discovered the minor planet Pallas on this date in 1802. Five years and a day later he spotted Vesta. Source.

Juno Lego

NASA's Juno probe to Jupiter carries aluminum Lego figures representing Jupiter, Juno and Galileo. Source.