Detail from a unique wide-angle hand mosaic of Surveyor 1's shadow on the Oceanus Procellarum, June 13, 1966. The mosaic is made of 66 gelatin silver prints in all, and measures 18 by 59 inches. (Each image mounted on the mosaic is approximately 6 by 6 inches.) The piece (lot #62) is estimated to go for $80,000 to $100,000. Photograph courtesy Bonhams auction house.

If you grew up near Bethpage, New York in the early 1960s, you probably were obsessed with the Apollo Lunar Module built by the Long Island-based Grumman Corporation. And if you were an extremely prescient teenager, you might have started amassing your own world-class collection of space-related items, including photographs, manuscripts, and prints.

Pierre Henri Puiseux and Maurice Lowey's large-format quadrant of the moon. Photograph courtesy Bonhams.

This Wednesday, Bonhams is auctioning off one such private collection. In a video on Bonhams’ Website, the collector (who wishes to remain anonymous) explains that he grew up “during the height of the windup to the Apollo era,” just a few miles from Grumman, and many of the fathers in his neighborhood worked on the Lunar Module. “I was working towards a goal fairly early on,” he recalls in the video. “In my early- to mid-teens, what I wanted to do was to have an exhibition focusing on unmanned space travel.”

Many of the items are one-of-a kind. The lunar photomosaic above (see the full image here), was made as a five-foot-wide presentation piece in 1966, and was painstakingly assembled by Kay Larson of the U.S. Geological Survey using images captured by Surveyor 1. “I’m lucky to have found this—it would have been thrown in the trash, eventually,” the collector notes.

John Russell's lunar globe, circa 1797. Photograph courtesy Bonhams.

There are objects relating to Mars, Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter, but Earth’s moon is the centerpiece of this show. Some of the items predate the space age. One particularly lovely object is a photograph made up of four large-format quadrants of the moon, taken in 1899, and probably created for the 1900 Paris Exposition. The photogravures, by Pierre Henri Puiseux and Maurice Loewy, were taken at the Paris Observatory. “It was only with NASA’s Lunar Orbiters in the 1960s,” reads the collection note, “that images substantially better than those of Loewy and Puiseux were obtained.” The plates are from Puiseux and Loewy’s Atlas photographique de la lune. The two men were able to photograph the moon only during perfect weather, the catalog notes, which meant just 50 or 60 nights each year—explaining why the Atlas took 14 years to complete. These may be the first oversize plates from the Atlas to come up for auction, and are expected to bring $12,000 to $18,000.

British pastel portraitist John Russell (the appointed painter to the King and the Prince of Wales) was so fascinated with the moon that he created a lunar globe in 1797, which he called a Selenographia. Russell spent many years drawing and observing the moon; his globe even accounts for lunar motion, or libration. No more than 11 Selenographias are believed to exist; six are in public collections. This example, lot number 23,  is expected to fetch between $200,000 to $300,000.

Model airplane powered by...flies. Photograph by Eric Long/NASM.

As we celebrate all things weird and wonderful on Halloween, let’s take a look at some of the stranger objects donated to the Smithsonian over the years.  The photograph above shows two model airplanes designed and built by Frank Ehling in the 1970s. Take a closer look — the models are powered by flies. As Kathy Hanser wrote for the National Air and Space Museum’s blog in 2009, “The one-fly design [on the right] has a wingspan of two inches, and the two-fly version, which features a delta-wing design, is four inches wide.” Ehling’s 2001 obituary in the Washington Post, writes Hanser, described the designer’s fly-harnessing method: “…Ehling honed an effective technique involving cupping a fly with his hands and then hurling it to the ground to knock it unconscious. He would then dab glue on its rear end, carefully avoiding its delicate wings, and attach the fly to the plane.”

Charles and Anne Lindbergh carried Armbrust Cups on their 1931 and 1933 flights on board their Lockheed Sirius "Tingmissartoq." Photograph courtesy NASM.

The strange device on the right, known as an Armbrust Cup, traveled around the globe with Charles and Anne Lindbergh in the 1930s. The cup, writes Museum education specialist Tim Grove, “converts condensation from breath into drinking water—for use in emergency landings at sea. Since weight restrictions were an ever-present challenge, the Lindberghs could take only a limited supply of water. Lindbergh had read about this new invention before his solo flight across the Atlantic and took one along.”

The Armbrust Cup was originally donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, but was eventually sent to the United States Air Force Museum. In 1959 the cup was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution’s Air Museum. It’s currently on display in the Boeing Aviation Hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.

Human-sized android, built by NASA in the 1960s for spacesuit testing. Photograph courtesy NASM.

Our final item is this somewhat creepy-looking android. It was built around 1962 at the Illinois Institute of Technology, writes Paul Ceruzzi, the Museum’s Chair of the Division of Space History, to test space suits for NASA. “It was intended to be installed in a prototype suit (on Earth), and its limbs would be set in motion that closely resembled what a human suit wearer would do. Strain gauges would tell how much force was required to move in a suit, and therefore how much effort an astronaut needed to wear the suit. It was never intended to fly in space, and could not operate without a control console connected to it.”

The designers managed to have a bit of fun with the android. “As a dramatic demonstration of its capabilities,” Ceruzzi writes, “its designers got it to dance ‘the Twist,’ and to mimic the pelvic gyrations of Elvis Presley.”

The android was donated to the Museum in 1986 by Larry Graham, and is on (static; no dancing) display at the Udvar-Hazy Center.

Send more flies!

Conversation overheard this morning between astronaut Suni Williams, onboard the International Space Station, and NASA’s payload science center in Huntsville, Alabama:

Huntsville: We did see [on video] Nefertiti eating a fly.

Williams: Did she jump to get it? How did she get it?

Huntsville: She did jump, she’s adapting well.

Williams:  Pretty awesome!

This is exciting news, presumably, to 19-year-old Amr Mohamad of Alexandria, Egypt, whose investigation of the weightless eating habits of two jumping spiders* named Nefertiti and Cleopatra was one of three winners of the global YouTube Space Lab competition for high-school students. Mohamed’s experiment arrived on the station just a few days ago on a Japanese cargo ship, and here the spiders are already munching away on fruitflies.

Mohamed thought Nefertiti and Cleopatra, who jump on their prey rather than trap them, would find zero-g hunting to be more of a challenge.  Here’s his experiment proposal:

*Note: An earlier version of this post misidentified both spiders as zebra spiders. Nefertiti is a redback jumping spider.

A team of student engineers from the University of Maryland are attempting to keep their pedal-powered helicopter, Gamera II, off the ground for at least 60 seconds  — which would set a new world record.

Watch live streaming of the trials on Friday morning, or follow their progress on Twitter.

Here’s video of a (40-second) flight earlier this week.

From the 2011 Team America Rocketry Challenge

These kids yawn at your typical roof egg-dropping challenge. Tomorrow, 100 teams will compete in the Team America Rocketry Challenge. The teams are made of three to ten middle and high school students, who have already bested hundreds of other teams from around the country to make it to the D.C.-area competition, where they’ll send handmade rockets into the sky for top-notch prizes.

The Challenge started in 2002 as a celebration of the centennial of aviation, but the response and support was so big, it’s continued annually ever since. The kids register in the fall and spend all year with a teacher-supervisor and a mentor from the National Association of Rocketry to learn the math and physics required to blast up to the required altitude (this year it’s 800 feet), while carrying two raw eggs safely up and back down to Earth.

The top ten teams split $60,000 in cash and scholarships, and are given opportunities with NASA’s Student Launch Initiative and trips to international air shows with member companies from the Challenge’s sponsor, the Aerospace Industries Association.

If you’re in the D.C. area, you can head over to see the teams compete tomorrow during an event that’s part celebration of science, engineering, and nerdery (people have been known to dress up in costume), and part introduction to the competitive world of the aerospace industry. The “Final Flyoff” happens in the Great Meadow at 5089 Old Tavern Road, The Plains, Virginia, just about an hour drive from Washington, D.C. Bring a picnic and watch the launches throughout the day, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. In between, wander around the exhibition area that will feature aerospace company displays, mini-rocket demos and contests, and college representative to talk about their science and engineering majors. Then see the Rocketry Challenge winners, and very likely the future leaders of the aerospace industry, crowned at 5 p.m.

Every ounce is counted on the Space Station: Before boarding the space shuttle Discovery, "Buzz went through incredible training to lose some weight," joked John Lasseter, Pixar's chief creative officer. Photograph courtesy NASA.

When John Lasseter, Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer, learned that a Buzz Lightyear action figure from the movie Toy Story was going to the International Space Station, “I thought I’d died and gone to heaven,” he said.

Lasseter was at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum today for the formal ceremony presenting the action figure (which spent 15 months in orbit) to the Museum. “I started crying when Discovery connected to the International Space Station,” said Lasseter. “There’s a tube that the astronauts go through, to go from the shuttle into the space station, and they didn’t carry Buzz. They opened his wings, they put his arms out, and Buzz Lightyear flew, in space, himself, up that tube, into the International Space Station. I’ve got chills right now thinking about it.”

Lasseter remembers watching the televised Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions as a child. “They were my heroes,” he explains. So years later, when a script called for a flashy toy to replace a child’s favorite—Woody the cowboy—”I said we have to have the toy be the coolest one you could imagine. The origin of Buzz, in every way, comes from NASA,” said Lasseter.

Margaret Weitekamp, a curator in the Museum’s Space History Division, noted that the Pixar/NASA donation includes videos and educational materials produced by Disney and Pixar to inspire children to get excited about science and technology. Later in the summer, Pixar’s Mission Launch videos will help educate visitors about the concepts of rendezvous, reentry, and space science. And Buzz Lightyear will have a place of honor in the mockup of the space shuttle’s crew cabin in the Museum’s Moving Beyond Earth gallery.

John Lasseter, chief creative officer at Pixar; Lori Garver, NASA deputy administrator; and Museum director Jack Dailey hold Buzz Lightyear, the Museum's newest acquisition. Photograph courtesy Mark Avino/NASM.

After the ceremony, Lasseter and Weitekamp took questions from the audience. “If Buzz was actually alive,” asked a young visitor from West Virginia, “what would those three buttons [on his chest] be for?” Lasseter explained they were Buzz’s communicator and voice box: “When he’s on location in the Gamma quadrant of Sector 3, and he’s out there as a space ranger, those buttons work different kinds of communication back to Star Command.”

When a visitor wondered where Buzz spent his time between flying on the shuttle and being accepted into the Smithsonian’s collections, Lasseter replied, “He was at Walt Disney World, Florida, riding rides.”

“Today is, without question, one of the greatest days of my life,” said Lasseter, of the donation.

Photo: FEMA

For 30 seconds beginning at 2 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, November 9, every television and radio station in every U.S. state and a few of its territories, both broadcast and cable, will offer different programming than usual. Wednesday’s message will be continuous whether by audio, video, or digital stream: This is a Test.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has assured the public that “it’s not pass or fail.” It’s simply the first nationwide trial of the emergency alert system (EAS).

That system has been tested on a local basis every week for the last 15 years, when EAS replaced the emergency broadcast system. But it’s never been tested simultaneously from shore to shore. For one thing, it takes a lot of coordination: from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Service. Weather alerts, unsurprisingly, have comprised most of the genuine, local uses of EAS.

Photo: National Archives and Records Administration

But EAS’s roots are not in storm warnings. Sixty years ago, a national system, CONELRAD (Control of Electromagnetic Radiation), was established in case of an air raid during the Cold War. Before CONELRAD, urgent news arrived by telephone or teletype machine to radio stations and fledgling TV networks, where a bulletin was typed in haste and handed to an announcer to read breathlessly on air. In March 1951, an FCC study recommended to President Harry Truman that “basic key stations” of the air defense command (ADC) and select radio stations reserve a special phone circuit and radio frequency to ensure a uniform and sober distribution.

On December 10, 1951, CONELRAD went live on two positions of the AM dial, 640 and 1240 kHz. It was tested nationally for the first time in the wee hours of September 16, 1953. By the summer of 1956, nationwide tests ran as long as 15 minutes and included a selection of tunes by the Air Force Symphony Orchestra. Almost from the start, though, the system gave false alarms from poorly wired connections or even lightning. Once a station on the CONELRAD circuit began transmitting, all other radio stations were to power down.

A public service announcement for CONELRAD. Photo: National Archives.

Commercial radio stations were often based in the center of cities, with their broadcast towers sitting atop the tallest available structures, making a natural bulls-eye for an enemy bomber to home in on its signal. To prevent such radio range finding, all stations other than the ring of CONELRAD transmitters were to temporarily cease broadcasting. Only brief bursts of emergency instructions were issued to prevent enemies homing in on the CONELRAD sites, which were nonetheless set well away from population centers.

Until 1963, the FCC required all radios sold in the U.S. to carry a mark reminding listeners where to tune in for civil defense instructions. Under CONELRAD, the small triangular CD or civil defense mark was also sold in a kit to glue onto the dials of older radios. When the national test transmits this week, we’ll see how that old technique compares to today’s digital reach.

When pilots make a bad landing they don’t blame their bankers. Or dig up references from their freshman year economic term papers. So why do bankers, hacks, and Capitol Hill flaks use a beloved aviation term to malign the national economy?

“The world is close to stall speed,” wrote one analyst, whose hyperbole was inevitable after economists from Beijing to Sydney started using the metaphor. “Rhode Island’s economy is now perilously close to stall speed,” frets Leonard Lardaro, professor of economics at the University of Rhode Island.

Over at Minyanville, a site for edgy financial commentary, writer Satyajit Das at least fleshed out the metaphor. “Powered flight requires air to flow smoothly over the wing at a certain speed. Erratic or slow air flow can cause a plane to stall,” wrote Das. “Most modern aircraft are fitted with a ‘stick shaker’ that rapidly and noisily vibrates the control yoke or ‘stick’ of an aircraft to warn the pilot of an imminent stall. The global economy, too, needs air flow — smooth, steady and strong growth. Unfortunately, the global economy’s stick shaker is vibrating violently.”

It’s not clear how long economy writers have laid claim to the metaphor, or who coined it first. But it went full throttle in April after its use in block letters atop a numbing, 62-page white paper by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Forecasting Recessions Using Stall Speeds.

Not only is the phrase overused lately, it was an imperfect metaphor from the outset. If we’ve got to tap the airman’s dictionary at all, why not minimum controllable airspeed?

The FAA’s Airplane Flying Handbook defines MCA as “a speed at which any further increase in angle of attack or load factor, or reduction in power, will cause an immediate stall.”

For the more poetic writers, MCA makes a sound that’s simultaneously terrifying and irritating. When an airplane changes its angle of attack in such a way that a stall is imminent, a “stall warning horn” positioned on the leading edge of a wing issues a haunting, grating moan. Not unlike the shrill clarion of financial pages themselves.

And you don’t need a rocket scientist to tell you what’s next. Already this summer, Bloomberg News compared the U.S. economy to a rocket ship:“If it has enough thrust it can escape the tug of economic gravity. Not enough, and it just might go into a tailspin.”

Just like our patience.

Albert Einstein Planetarium, Photo Courtesy NASM

The series starts this Saturday with Dr. Gareth Morgan, a geologist with the museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, discussing “The Changing Face of the Moon: Exploring the Ancient History of Giant Impacts and Volcanism.”  Tickets are free but you must reserve one here.  Lecture starts at 5:45 p.m.; observing at 6:45 p.m.

Click over to the full list of lectures and save the date for your favorites.

Each day this week until September 11, the National Museum of American History is displaying artifacts recovered from the horrific crash of United Airlines Flight 93 a decade ago in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, along with more than 50 objects from the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.

Helena Wright, the museum’s curator of graphic arts, describes the sensitivity guiding the artifacts’ collection and preservation. “Shortly after the attacks, we began discussing what our role as a museum should be, and concluded that we had a responsibility to document the events of September 11 in the National Collections,” said Wright. “The immediacy and deadly nature of the events posed particular collecting challenges. We worried about appearing ghoulish in the face of bereavement, about important material deteriorating or even being thrown out, and about whether we understood enough about the events to document them for posterity. And we knew we would have to be selective—we cannot collect everything.”

The exhibit includes personal items from some of the seven crew and 33 passengers who perished when a terrorist hijacking ended with the airliner plunging to the ground. One of the artifacts is a tattered but still readable personal log carried by flight attendant Lorraine Bay, who had been working in the first-class section.

Vertical Speed Indicator

Among the most arresting artifacts were those recovered from the aircraft itself, frozen in time at the second of impact. A bright orange call button ripped from a ceiling panel (above) is slightly charred. The aircraft’s vertical speed indicator lies mangled and marred.

The Smithsonian Channel has produced a 46-minute video to present the moving stories behind its collection, while the American History museum considers its exhibit a work in progress, and invites additional donations of artifacts and information from the public.

National Aviation Day coffee mug, from Cafe Press.

You may have noticed the U.S. flag flying on a federal building today, but chances are it was on the pole yesterday, too. Or perhaps you woke feeling the need for “appropriate exercises to further stimulate interest in aviation,” which many of us consider part of our routine. At least today, though, you’ve got President Franklin Roosevelt and Orville Wright to thank. Orville was born this day in 1871, and in 1939, Roosevelt issued a national proclamation to designate August 19 as National Aviation Day.

The National Park Service kicks off appropriate exercises at 9:00 this morning at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in North Carolina, with a full day of stimulation beginning with a Junior Flight Ranger program and including a noontime chat and book-signing of The Bishop’s Boys by National Air and Space Museum curator Tom Crouch.

Orville, about the time of the national proclamation. Photo: Library of Congress

Candles burn for Orville across the continent. National Aviation Day at the Alaska Aviation Museum brings a 10 percent discount off anything from the gift store; a moonlight helicopter ride and barbecue for charity at the Craig Airport in Jacksonville, FL; a pilot meet-n-greet in Davenport IA; and the chance to earn an Aerospace Merit Badge in Harrisburg, PA. You can fly an egg-carton glider at the National Museum of the USAF in Dayton.

Dusting off Orville Wright for his birthday, and a new exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. Photo: Courtesy of the News-Observer

Orville’s first flight was only 120 feet, but with this much ground to cover, you’ll need a long-range private jet. Find one at JetRequest, which is offering special rates for the day.

If all this exercise is too much stimulation, finish your coffee and get back in bed. Especially if you’re in Canada, where you’ve already missed the day by months.

By Ismael Roman, third place, category 3 (14 to 17 year olds).

Each year, the National Aeronautic Association (NAA) and the National Association of State Aviation Officials (NASAO) organize an art contest meant to encourage young people to become familiar with (and participate in) aeronautics, engineering, and science.

“The quality of the art we see is unbelievable,” says Dik Daso, who has been a judge for the past five years. Daso, a curator of modern military aircraft at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, along with two other judges, selected nine first-, second-, and third-place winners from approximately 170 state finalists.

The theme of this year’s contest was the 50th anniversary of human spaceflight, and more than 6,800 students from 24 states participated in the U.S. competition. (Students first compete at the state level; each state aviation organization then sends its finalists to NASAO.)  The artwork of the U.S. winners (who range in age from 6 to 17 years old) will be entered in the international aviation art contest, held in Lausanne, Switzerland this month.

For those states that do not hold a competition, students and teachers were able—for the first time—to send submissions to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Prescott, Arizona campus, which then grouped submissions by state. “What’s interesting,” says Kathryn Solee, president of the NASAO Center for Aviation Research and Education, “is that New Jersey sent over 400 pieces of art to Embry-Riddle, and had two national winners.”

By Nolan Riggin, first place, category 1 (6 to 9 year olds).

“100 years ago, your great-great-grandparents read about traveling through space in science fiction books,” reads the contest brochure. “50 years ago, your grandparents listened [to] the radio or watched on television when the first human orbited the earth, and today you can watch a small crew of astronauts from around the world share living and research quarters on the International Space Station on your laptop computer….  Time to grab your favorite paintbrush or markers, buckle up into a secure position in front of your desk, and blast off into your imagination…”

By Brian Sun, second place, category 2 (10 to 13 years old).

Through a process of elimination, each judge argues for his or her favorite pieces. Since the winning artwork will be made into posters, “you look for themes that have public appeal,” says Daso, “in addition to artistic skill.”

Daso’s interest in the competition goes beyond enjoying the artwork, however. “I’m very excited to see young people getting involved, really involved with aviation topics,” says Daso.

By Karen Ahn, first place, category 2 (10 to 13 year olds).

Well, Norm Augustine gets almost that welcome wherever he shows up. On Friday, March 12, the former CEO of Lockheed Martin and the chairman of last year’s presidentially appointed blue-ribbon Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee lent his gravitas to an early morning kick-off of the Business and Industry STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) Coalition held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. That coalition, representing 30 business and industry organizations and 20 million employees, many of them in aerospace, issued a call to arms to double the number of college graduates with a bachelor’s degree in the four STEM disciplines from 200,000 a year to 400,000 a year by 2020. This should, well, stem the receding flow of highly-skilled workers needed to replace attrition in the U.S. workforce over the next decade.

Norm Augustine's worried about the future supply of skilled technical workers in the U.S. Photo: NASA/Paul E. Alers

The coalition will develop an inventory of work skills needed by business over the next 10 years, engage employers to promote game-changing STEM programs in all 50 states, and improve attitudes of the public toward STEM professions. The coalition will work with the already established STEM Education Coalition, which is co-chaired by the American Chemical Society and the National Science Teachers Association, and will be joined by advisory members from the Defense, Education, and Homeland Security departments, which also face shortages of highly skilled tech workers.

The central message of the coalition is that American students aren’t keeping up with the rest of the world technologically. One marker: The 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment, among the most comprehensive international comparative surveys in the last several years. It found that American students ranked 21st out of 30 nations surveyed in science literacy and 25th out of 30 in math literacy. Augustine reminded the auditorium that just four percent of the working U.S. population are scientists and engineers, despite the fact that science and engineering accounts for up to 80 percent of GDP growth over the last half a century; and that two-thirds of PhDs awarded in the U.S. now go to foreign nationals.

Who better than Augustine to demonstrate that a career in aerospace is prestigious? He was the highest profile speaker of the morning, even with two congressmen on the stage. It’s hard to find English on his resume, what with all the Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, Sigma Xi, and Tau Beta Pi. Since graduating from Princeton long ago with a degree in aeronautical engineering, he’s received 23 more honorary degrees, as well as the Department of Defense’s highest civilian decoration, the Distinguished Service Medal—five times. He served for 16 years on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, led the 1990 Advisory Committee on the Future of the U.S. Space Program, and chaired the National Academies commission that produced the landmark 2007 report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future. These took up about half a paragraph on a full page needed to list all of his achievements in the hand-out.

Oh, and he’s stood on both the North and South Poles. But only on Earth.