26Anna Lee Fisher
NASA astronaut Anna Lee Fisher made news in 2012, when, during the landing of the Space Shuttle Discovery at Washington's Dulles Airport, she was asked by an aspiring young astronaut how they could get into the space program. Fisher quipped "study Russian."
27. Snoopy is NASA's official safety mascot. Every astronaut since 1968 has worn a silver Snoopy pin into space. Upon return, the astronauts present the pin as a special recognition to a civilian team member who helped keep them safe.
28. NASA's space shuttle flew 135 missions with a flight computer that had less than 1% of the computing power of an Xbox 360.
29. In response to the film "Apollo 18", NASA engineer John Schuessler clarified that moon landings ended with Apollo 17 because NASA simply did not have the time or funds to fit in more moon landings after 1972. He also sees no evidence of extraterrestrial life on the Moon
30. There is a highway in space called 'The Interplanetary Superhighway.' It was mapped out by NASA scientists to send probes around the solar system with the least resistance using gravity.
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31NASA Missions
If NASA's funding had remained at 1969 Apollo mission levels, NASA had plans to develop a lunar orbit station in 1978, a lunar surface base in 1980, and a manned mission to Mars in 1981 or 1983.
32. Despite being strongly associated with NASA and astronauts, freeze-dried ice cream was never taken on board any missions to space.
33. NASA had plans in place to sever all communication with Apollo 11 astronauts on the moon if they were to get stranded by a technical failure. Nixon even had a prewritten speech that said, "For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come, will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind." This almost did end up happening as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin broke a vital circuit breaker, snapping power to the engine. They however were able to push and hold it back in with a felt-tip pen long enough for it to take off from the moon.
34. The debris field of the 2003 Columbia Disaster stretched from Texas through Louisiana. The search team was so thorough that they ended up recovering nearly 84,000 pieces of the shuttle, as well as discovering several murder victims and a few meth labs.
35. NASA was inspired by Fritz Lang's film, 'Frau im Mond', to use countdowns for rocket launches. NASA used the countdown to not only help technicians synchronize, but also found that announcing the countdown would build suspense for those watching at home.
