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Description
PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Wednesday, November 8, 2006
Source: NASA HQ

NASA will honor former astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad for his involvement in the U.S. space program with the presentation of the Ambassador of Exploration Award at 2 p.m. EST, Saturday, Nov. 18, in the Allen Theater, The Museum of Flight, 9404 East Marginal Way South, Seattle.

NASA is presenting the Ambassador of Exploration Award to the astronauts and other key individuals who participated in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs for realizing America's vision of space exploration from 1961 to 1972.

The award is a sample of lunar material mounted for public display. The material is part of the 842 pounds of samples brought back to Earth during the six Apollo lunar expeditions from 1969 to 1972.

Over the next three and a half years, after Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s visit, another ten men walked the moon’s surface, and that was it. NASA did not broadcast the departing utterance of Apollo 17’s Eugene Cernan, the last ever made from the moon, but his words—“Let’s get this mutha outta here”—now seem less canned than Armstrong’s immortal banality about “one giant leap for mankind.”

For all its technical brilliance, the unmanned American space program—its Voyagers, Galileo, and Hubble—has been a photo safari, merely a virtual triumph. Mars remains a red gleam in the eye of a species that can’t quite bring itself to go there. The space shuttle, between catastrophes, travels its circles to nowhere.

Description
PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Wednesday, November 8, 2006
Source: NASA HQ

NASA will honor former astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad for his involvement in the U.S. space program with the presentation of the Ambassador of Exploration Award at 2 p.m. EST, Saturday, Nov. 18, in the Allen Theater, The Museum of Flight, 9404 East Marginal Way South, Seattle.

NASA is presenting the Ambassador of Exploration Award to the astronauts and other key individuals who participated in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs for realizing America's vision of space exploration from 1961 to 1972.

The award is a sample of lunar material mounted for public display. The material is part of the 842 pounds of samples brought back to Earth during the six Apollo lunar expeditions from 1969 to 1972.

Over the next three and a half years, after Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s visit, another ten men walked the moon’s surface, and that was it. NASA did not broadcast the departing utterance of Apollo 17’s Eugene Cernan, the last ever made from the moon, but his words—“Let’s get this mutha outta here”—now seem less canned than Armstrong’s immortal banality about “one giant leap for mankind.”

For all its technical brilliance, the unmanned American space program—its Voyagers, Galileo, and Hubble—has been a photo safari, merely a virtual triumph. Mars remains a red gleam in the eye of a species that can’t quite bring itself to go there. The space shuttle, between catastrophes, travels its circles to nowhere.