20 July 1969 will be the 40th anniversary of mankind’s first steps on the Moon. Leading up to that anniversary, NASA is “seeking ideas from the public, academia, and industry about how to analyze and catalog notes from spaceflight pioneer Wernher von Braun into an electronic, searchable database or other system.”
Von Braun was the first director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and a key figure in the development of the Saturn V rocket which launched the Apollo flights to the Moon. NASA has a full collection of “Weekly Notes” von Braun wrote during the 1960s and 1970s. These notes were used to track programmatic and institutional issues at Marshall, and are considered by many historians to be a valuable source of data.
NASA has issued a request for information and is looking for concepts that will provide an innovative resource for agency engineers and scientists, as well as researchers in academia and industry. For more information and to read the full request, see this page.
NASA also offers von Braun’s complete biography on this page.
NASA is planning several activities and events around the July anniversary. The events will celebrate the Apollo Program, its accomplishments, and the benefits to our lives today. Details on these activities are available on this page.