A History of NASA Press Kits (and where to find them!)

Documenting the Final Frontier

The story of humanity’s expansion into space is a story of incredible technical achievement. It’s also a story of communication. From the first tentative suborbital hops to the complex robotic explorers on Mars, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) hasn’t just made history; it has had to explain it. At the center of this communications effort is a humble, yet essential, document: the press kit.

The NASA press kit, in all its forms, is the agency’s official narrative, a tool designed to translate the complexities of rocket science and astrophysics into a language accessible to journalists and, through them, the public. Its evolution from simple mimeographed packets to interactive digital toolkits mirrors the evolution of NASA itself. It’s a journey from the Cold War space race to the era of social media, from a handful of reporters at Cape Canaveral to a global audience of billions. This article explores the history of this often-overlooked artifact, a document that served as the first draft of space history.

The Dawn of the Space Age: Project Mercury and Gemini

When NASA was established in 1958, it was operating in a new media environment. The Cold War with the Soviet Union made the space race front-page news. The agency understood from the beginning that public support, channeled through Congress, was dependent on media coverage. The press kit was the primary tool for shaping that coverage.

Forging a New Relationship with the Press

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, government agencies were not typically known for their transparency. NASA was different. It was a civilian agency, and its mission – to send a man into space – was a matter of intense national pride and curiosity. The press corps descended on Cape Canaveral in Florida and the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas. They were hungry for information, and NASA‘s Public Affairs Office was created to provide it.

The first press kits for Project Mercury were functional, no-frills documents. They were often assembled by hand, with pages typed on a typewriter and reproduced on a mimeograph machine. These packets were bound by a simple staple in the top-left corner. They were not glossy marketing brochures; they were technical manuals for non-technical people.

The Anatomy of an Early Press Kit

The content of a Mercury press kit established a template that would endure for decades. A typical kit for a mission like Friendship 7 (flown by John Glenn) would include several key components:

• Mission Objectives: A clear, concise statement of what the flight intended to do. For Mercury, this was often as straightforward as “To orbit a manned spacecraft around Earth, observe the astronaut’s reactions to the space environment, and recover the astronaut and spacecraft safely.”
• Astronaut Biography: A one- or two-page summary of the pilot. This included his birthplace, education, military service, flight hours, and personal details like his wife’s and children’s names. This humanized the mission, turning test pilots into national heroes. The original “Mercury Seven” astronauts became household names largely because of these biographies.
• Spacecraft Details: Simplified diagrams and fact sheets about the Mercury capsule and the Redstone or Atlas booster. It would explain the different systems – life support, communications, re-entry – in basic terms.
• Flight Profile: A minute-by-minute timeline of the mission, from launch to splashdown. This was perhaps the most important part for the media. It told journalists what to expect and when. It listed key events like “Booster Engine Cutoff” (BECO), “Capsule Separation,” and “Retrofire.”
• Glossary of Terms: NASA was inventing a new language. Words like “apogee,” “perigee,” “telemetry,” and “g-force” were new to the public. The glossary was a vital decoder ring for reporters.
• Photographs: Tucked into the packet were 8×10 black-and-white glossy photographs. These typically showed the astronaut in his silver spacesuit, a picture of the launch vehicle on the pad, and a diagram of the spacecraft.

The Gemini Evolution

As NASA moved into Project Gemini (1965-1966), the missions became more complex, and so did the press kits. Gemini was the bridge to the Moon. Its missions involved two-man crews, rendezvous and docking procedures, and the first American spacewalks.

The press kit for Gemini IV, for example, placed a heavy emphasis on the “Extra-Vehicular Activity” (EVA), or spacewalk, of Ed White. The kit provided extensive details about his spacesuit, the life-support chest pack, and the “Hand-Held Maneuvering Unit” (a small gas gun). It explained why the EVA was important for future Apollo program missions.

These early kits were the single source of truth. In an era before the internet and 24-hour cable news, a reporter covering a launch relied almost exclusively on the press kit for background information and the live audio feed from NASA Mission Control for real-time updates.

To the Moon: The Apollo Program

The Apollo program (1961-1972) was a communications challenge on an entirely new scale. NASA wasn’t just sending astronauts into orbit; it was sending them to another world. The public’s fascination was immense, and the media’s need for information was bottomless.

Unprecedented Public Interest, Unprecedented Media Kits

The Apollo press kits were no longer simple stapled packets. They became thick, spiral-bound books, often running over 200 pages. They were professionally typeset and printed, with high-quality diagrams and fold-out illustrations. These kits were produced in the thousands and distributed to a massive international press corps.

The Apollo 11 press kit, issued on July 6, 1969, is a masterpiece of public information. It is a dense, comprehensive guide to the most complex undertaking in human history. Its table of contents alone revealed the mission’s scope, with sections on launch windows, the Saturn V launch vehicle, the Command and Service Module (call sign “Columbia”), the Lunar Module (call sign “Eagle”), and the lunar surface experiments.

What Was in an Apollo 11 Press Kit?

To understand the Apollo 11 kit is to understand the mission. It contained:

• Biographies: Detailed profiles of Neil Armstrong (Commander), Michael Collins (Command Module Pilot), and Buzz Aldrin (Lunar Module Pilot).
• Mission Timeline: A “Flight Plan” that detailed the mission from “T-minus 8 hours” to “Splashdown + 1 hour.” It included every major event, from transposition and docking to the lunar-orbit insertion burn and the powered descent to the Moon.
• Lunar Surface Operations: A dedicated section on what Armstrong and Aldrin would do once they landed at Tranquility Base. This included the deployment of the television camera, the collection of the “contingency sample” of lunar soil, the unfurling of the American flag, and the setup of the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package (EASEP).
• Science Background: Explainers on what scientists hoped to learn from the lunar rock samples and the deployed experiments, such as the seismometer and the laser-ranging retroreflector.
• Hardware and Systems: Dozens of pages with detailed diagrams of the Saturn V‘s three stages, the Lunar Module‘s descent and ascent stages, and the spacesuits.
• Contingency Plans: The kit even included information on abort procedures, outlining what would happen if a problem occurred at different phases of the flight.

This document armed reporters with the knowledge to cover the mission intelligently. When Walter Cronkiteexplained the Lunar Module‘s landing sequence to millions of viewers, his script was based directly on the information found in the NASA press kit.

The “Successful Failure”: Apollo 13

The Apollo 13 mission in 1970 demonstrated the limits of a pre-prepared press kit. The kit for Apollo 13 was, like its predecessors, a detailed plan for a lunar landing at the Fra Mauro highlands. It was filled with geological maps and timelines for surface EVAs.

When the Service Module‘s oxygen tank exploded two days into the flight, that entire document became obsolete. The press kit retained its value in an unexpected way. It provided the essential background information – on the crew, the spacecraft’s systems, and the relationship between the Command Module (“Odyssey”) and the Lunar Module (“Aquarius”) – that journalists needed to understand the “lifeboat” scenario that was unfolding. NASA‘s Public Affairs team shifted from distributing kits to holding continuous press briefings, feeding real-time information to a world holding its breath. The crisis highlighted that the press kit was the foundation of knowledge upon which breaking news was built.

The Post-Apollo Era: Skylab and Detente

After the Moon landings, public and political interest in space exploration began to wane. The “space race” was won. NASA‘s focus, and its press kits, shifted to long-duration missions and international cooperation.

Skylab: America’s First Space Station

Skylab (1973-1974), America‘s first space station, presented a new communications challenge. The missions were not short sprints but long marathons, with crews staying in orbit for 28, 59, and 84 days.

The Skylab press kits were massive, often delivered as a set of books. There was a main “Skylab Reference” guide and then specific supplements for each of the three manned missions. The focus was less on the drama of launch and landing and more on the science being performed. The kits were filled with details on:

• Solar Astronomy: The Apollo Telescope Mount, which Skylab crews used to study the Sun.
• Earth Resources: How astronauts were using cameras and sensors to study Earth‘s weather, agriculture, and oceans.
• Medical Experiments: The kits detailed the extensive medical tests designed to understand the effects of long-term weightlessness on the human body, such as bone density loss and cardiovascular changes.

The Skylab program itself had a dramatic start when a micrometeoroid shield was ripped off during launch. The press kit for the first crewed mission (Skylab 2) had to be rapidly updated to include details of the audacious repair plan, which involved the crew deploying a makeshift sunshade.

The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

In 1975, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) marked a major geopolitical event: the first joint mission between the United States and the Soviet Union. The press kit for this mission was unique. It was a document of détente as much as a guide to a spaceflight.

It contained all the standard NASA elements but added several new ones:

• Soviet Program Details: For the first time, a NASA press kit included detailed information on the Soyuz spacecraft, the Soyuz rocket, and biographies of the cosmonauts, Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov.
• The Docking Module: Extensive diagrams and explanations of the new, universal docking module that allowed the fundamentally different American and Soviet spacecraft to connect in orbit.
• Joint Operations: Timelines that were coordinated between Houston and Moscow, with details on which language would be spoken when.

The ASTP kit was a symbol of a new, more collaborative era, and it required NASA‘s press office to coordinate directly with its Soviet counterpart.

A New Generation: The Space Shuttle Era

The launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia on mission STS-1 in 1981 opened a new chapter. The Shuttle was a reusable space plane, a “space truck” designed to make access to orbit routine. This shift from exploration to operations was reflected in the press kits.

The “Reusable” Press Kit

Because the Shuttle orbiter itself was a reusable vehicle, NASA adopted a more modular approach to its press materials. The agency issued a “Space Shuttle Reference Manual,” a thick binder that contained all the baseline information about the orbiters (Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis), the main engines, the external tank, and the solid rocket boosters.

Then, for each individual mission (STS-1, STS-2, etc.), NASA would issue a smaller, mission-specific press kit. This packet would be hole-punched, ready to be inserted into the main reference binder. This mission-specific kit contained:

• Crew Biographies: Shuttle crews were larger, growing to seven members. Bios became more diverse, including mission specialists (scientists and engineers) and payload specialists, not just pilots.
• Payloads: This was the new focus. The kit detailed the satellites being deployed (like the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite) or the science modules being carried in the cargo bay (like the European-built Spacelab).
• Mission Objectives and Timelines: The day-by-day plan of operations, centered on payload deployment, science experiments, or spacewalks.

As Shuttle flights became more frequent in the mid-1980s, coverage became more routine. The press kits were still produced faithfully for every flight, but they rarely generated the front-page news of the Apollo era.

Communicating Tragedy

That routine was shattered on January 28, 1986, with the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. The pre-mission press kit for STS-51-L instantly became a historical document of a terrible tragedy. It contained the hopeful biographies of the seven crew members, including Christa McAuliffe, the Teacher in Space.

In the aftermath, NASA‘s public affairs role shifted from promotion to crisis communication. The press kit was replaced by investigative reports, beginning with the Rogers Commission Report. This event forced a re-evaluation of NASA‘s public relations, which had been criticized for a lack of transparency about the risks.

When Shuttle flights resumed in 1988 with STS-26, the press kits were more somber. They included extensive sections on the safety modifications and redesigns made to the solid rocket boosters and other systems.

A similar pattern followed the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. The STS-107 press kit, full of details about the science mission, became an artifact. It was replaced by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) report, which served as the definitive public document explaining the accident.

The Unmanned Storytellers: JPL and the Grand Tour

While the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston managed the human missions, NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, was sending robotic explorers to the outer planets. These missions, which unfolded over years or decades, required a completely different kind of press kit.

Packaging Planetary Encounters

The press kits for missions like the Viking landers to Mars in 1976 were comprehensive. They had to explain not just the rocket and the spacecraft, but also the geology and atmosphere of another planet. The Viking kits were full of scientific background, detailing the onboard experiments designed to search for signs of life in the Martian soil.

The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions, launched in 1977, were a “Grand Tour” of the outer solar system. A single press kit at launch would have been useless. Instead, JPL adopted an episodic approach.

They issued a main launch kit, but then, as the spacecraft approached each planet, they released a new, specific “encounter press kit.” There was a Jupiter encounter kit in 1979, a Saturn kit in 1980-81, a Uranus kit in 1986, and a Neptune kit in 1989. Each kit was a self-contained guide to that specific planetary system, including:

• Scientific Background: What was known about the planet and its moons.
• Expected Discoveries: A list of scientific questions the encounter hoped to answer.
• Encounter Timeline: A “play-by-play” of the flyby, noting when the spacecraft would be closest to a specific moon or ring system.
• Imaging Plans: Details on when the first pictures were expected and what they might show.

These kits, along with JPL‘s charismatic press briefings, turned robotic missions into dramatic, serialized events for the public.

Hubble: From Flaw to Legend

The Hubble Space Telescope, launched on a Space Shuttle in 1990, had a press kit full of ambitious promises about “seeing to the edge of the universe.” When the telescope’s primary mirror was found to be flawed, NASAfaced a public relations crisis.

The press kit for the 1993 Shuttle servicing mission (STS-61) is another classic. It was a story of redemption. It detailed, in painstaking clarity, the nature of the “spherical aberration” flaw and the ingenious COSTAR instrument – essentially a set of “eyeglasses” for the telescope. The kit’s diagrams of the complex spacewalks required to install COSTAR and a new camera (WFPC2) were essential for helping the media explain the high-stakes repair to the public. When the first corrected images were released, the success was all the more powerful because the press kit had so clearly laid out the problem and the solution.

The Digital Transition: From Paper to Pixels

The 1990s brought a change that would completely reshape the press kit: the internet. The physical, paper-based kit, which had reigned for over 30 years, was about to be replaced by electrons.

The Rise of the Electronic Press Kit (EPK)

At first, the transition was slow. NASA began by creating “electronic press kits” (EPKs), which were often just text files or simple HTML pages posted on a Gopher site or an early World Wide Web server. Journalists could download the text of the press kit instead of waiting for it to arrive by mail.

The Portable Document Format (PDF) became a major tool. NASA could now take the exact, typeset, and illustrated press kit that would have gone to the printer and simply post it online. This preserved the official look and feel of the document, made it universally accessible, and drastically reduced printing and distribution costs.

The construction of the International Space Station (ISS) in the late 1990s and 2000s relied heavily on these PDF kits. Each Shuttle assembly mission and each new Soyuz crew rotation had its own PDF kit, available for download from the NASA.gov website.

Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner Rover

The true turning point was the Mars Pathfinder mission, which landed on Mars on July 4, 1997. JPL created a website for the mission that became a global phenomenon.

This website was the press kit. It was a living, dynamic entity. Instead of just providing pre-mission background, the Pathfinder website was updated daily with new images from the lander and the small Sojourner rover. The public no longer had to wait for the evening news or the next day’s newspaper; they could see the Martian landscape at the same time as the scientists.

The site received hundreds of millions of hits, setting records and demonstrating that the internet was NASA‘s new and most powerful communication tool. The traditional press kit (a PDF guide was still produced) served as the background file, but the website was the main event.

The Modern Era: Social Media and Immersive Storytelling

Today, the concept of a single, monolithic “press kit” is almost quaint. NASA‘s public affairs strategy is multi-platform and interactive. The modern “press kit” is not a document; it’s a “media toolkit” or “media resources page.”

Beyond the PDF: The Modern Digital Toolkit

When NASA prepares for a major event, like the landing of the Perseverance rover (Mars 2020) or the launch of the Artemis I mission, it builds a dedicated web portal. This portal is a one-stop shop for media, influencers, and the general public.

A typical modern toolkit includes:

• Fact Sheets: Short, easily digestible PDFs on the mission, the spacecraft, the rocket, and the science goals.
• B-Roll Video: High-definition video clips (often in 4K resolution) free for media use. This includes animations of the mission, interviews with scientists and engineers, and footage of the spacecraft being built and tested.
• High-Resolution Images: A gallery of photos, diagrams, and infographics, all available for high-resolution download.
• Animations: Computer-generated animations are a staple. For the Mars rovers, JPL produced now-famous videos of the “Seven Minutes of Terror,” the complex landing sequence. This visual storytelling is far more effective than a text description in a paper kit.
• Social Media Links: A list of all relevant social media accounts on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms. NASA often gives its missions their own “personalities” on social media, like the Curiosity Rover, which “tweets” in the first person.
• Live Stream Information: Clear links and schedules for the live NASA TV broadcast of the launch or landing.
• Press Contacts: A list of public affairs officers for different aspects of the mission.

The Rise of Commercial Crew

The Commercial Crew Program has added another layer of complexity. When NASA launches astronauts on a SpaceX Crew Dragon or a Boeing Starliner, the press kit is a joint effort.

NASA‘s media toolkit will host the mission details, astronaut bios, and ISS information. It will then link directly to the SpaceX or Boeing website, which hosts its own press kit with technical details about the Falcon 9 rocket or Atlas V rocket and the private spacecraft. This reflects the new reality of public-private partnerships in space.

The Artemis Program

The Artemis program, NASA‘s plan to return astronauts to the Moon, combines all these modern elements. The Artemis I press kit was a massive digital portal. It explained the new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft. It used slick animations, high-impact videos, and a dedicated “Artemis” brand identity. It’s designed to capture the imagination of a new generation that did not witness Apollo, while also providing the technical depth required by veteran space reporters.

The Evolving Anatomy of a NASA Press Kit

While the format has changed dramatically, the core purpose of the press kit has not. It is still NASA‘s primary tool for providing accurate, official, and comprehensive background information to the media.

The Constant Elements

From Mercury to Artemis, several key pieces of information have always been present:

• Who: Biographies of the astronauts or key mission personnel.
• What: A clear statement of the mission objectives.
• When: A detailed timeline of the launch, key mission events, and landing.
• How: Information on the hardware – the rocket and the spacecraft.
• Why: The scientific or exploratory justification for the mission.

The Evolved Elements

What has changed is the delivery and richness of that information.

• Text has been supplemented by infographics.
• Black-and-white diagrams have been replaced by 3D computer animations.
• Glossy 8×10 photos have been replaced by online 4K video repositories.
• The glossary of terms has been replaced by interactive websites and social media Q&A sessions.
• The one-way distribution of information (from NASA to press) has become a two-way conversationwith the public.

The following table summarizes this evolution:

More Than Just Media: The Press Kit as a Historical Artifact

Today, these old press kits are highly sought-after by collectors and historians. They are more than just obsolete media guides; they are primary source documents.

A Primary Source for Historians

A NASA press kit provides a unique snapshot of a mission before it happened. It captures the agency’s official plans, expectations, and priorities at a specific moment in time. When compared with the post-mission reports, it helps historians understand what went right, what went wrong (Apollo 13), and what was entirely unexpected (the discoveries of Voyager).

A Window into NASA’s Public Relations Strategy

The press kits also reveal the evolution of NASA‘s own voice. The early Mercury kits are terse, technical, and carry the serious tone of the Cold War. The Apollo kits are confident, exhaustive, and educational, reflecting an agency at the peak of its prestige. The modern Artemis toolkits are vibrant, branded, and designed for social media engagement, reflecting a modern agency competing for public attention in a crowded media landscape.

The kits show what NASA chose to emphasize. In the 1960s, the focus was overwhelmingly on the astronaut-pilots, the “men” in the “manned” spacecraft. Today, the kits give equal, if not greater, prominence to the scientific instruments, the mission’s diverse engineering teams, and the educational outreach components.

Collectibility and Public Memory

An original Apollo 11 press kit can sell for thousands of dollars. It’s a tangible piece of the event. For many, owning one is like owning a piece of the Lunar Module itself. It’s a physical link to a time when the entire world gathered around televisions to watch two men walk on the Moon, guided in their understanding by the very pages in that kit.

Even the digital kits serve this role. NASA and space history enthusiasts meticulously archive the PDF kits from the Shuttle and ISS eras, preserving them as searchable, high-fidelity records of spaceflight history.

Summary

The NASA press kit began as a humble stack of stapled papers, a necessary tool to explain a new and complex endeavor to a curious press. Over six decades, it transformed into a glossy, 300-page book for Apollo, a modular reference manual for the Space Shuttle, and finally, a dynamic and interactive digital portal for Mars rovers and the Artemis generation.

Through all this change, its mission has remained the same: to be the authoritative source, the official storyteller, and the translator of dreams into facts. It is the document that provides the “who, what, when, where, how, and why” for humanity’s greatest adventures. From the mimeograph to the multimedia toolkit, the press kit has been, and continues to be, the first draft of space history.

Appendix: A Guide to NASA’s Online Press Kit Archives

A complete, itemized list of every press kit NASA has released since 1958 would include thousands of documents. These materials are not consolidated into a single public database. Instead, they are preserved across several different official and historical archives, often organized by the program or NASA center that managed the mission.

This appendix provides a comprehensive guide to the primary online collections where you can find these historical press kits, from the dawn of the space age to current missions.

Project Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab

The press kits for NASA‘s foundational human spaceflight programs are the most widely archived. While complete digital collections for Project Mercury are less common, Project Gemini and Project Apollo are well-preserved.

• NASA Apollo 50th Anniversary Press Kit Collection
  This official NASA page provides high-quality PDF scans of the press kits for Apollo 7 through Apollo 17.
• Kennedy Space Center Library Archives (Heroic Relics Mirror)
  This is a mirrored copy of the historical Kennedy Space Center library’s press kit collection. It contains links to press kits for Apollo 6 through Apollo 17, as well as the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.
• Chester County Astronomical Society Press Kit Archive
  This public archive hosts a valuable collection that includes press kits for Gemini 6, Gemini 8, Apollo 6 through Apollo 17, and the Skylab program.
• The Apollo Press Kits Directory
  This unique historical collection focuses on the Apollo 11 mission and stands apart by archiving not only NASA‘s official kit but also the supplemental press kits released by the program’s many contractors, such as Grumman, IBM, and North American Rockwell.

Space Shuttle Program

The NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) History Office maintains the definitive collection of Space Shuttle press kits, covering missions from 1981 to 2011.

• NASA JSC History Portal: Space Shuttle Press Kits
  This archive organizes the press kits by year. It contains the official kit for nearly every Space Shuttle mission, with the exception of those dedicated to the Department of Defense.

International Space Station (ISS)

Media resources for the International Space Station (ISS) are typically released on a per-mission basis, covering individual crew expeditions and cargo resupply flights. A single historical archive is not maintained, but resources can be found in several places.

• NASA ISS Expedition 5 Press Kit (Example)
  This link to the Data.gov catalog for the Expedition 5 press kit serves as an example of a historical ISS mission kit.
• ISS National Laboratory Media Resources
  The ISS National Lab provides press releases and media resources, though these are more focused on individual experiments and research payloads.

Robotic and Scientific Missions (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) manages the agency’s vast portfolio of robotic exploration missions. The JPL website serves as the primary repository for these modern press kits.

• NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Press Kits Archive This reverse-chronological list is the definitive source for modern scientific mission press kits. It includes resources for:
  • Mars Missions: Perseverance (Mars 2020), Curiosity (Mars Science Laboratory), InSight, and Phoenix.
  • Outer Planets: Europa Clipper, Psyche, and Juno.
  • Earth Science: NISAR and SWOT.
  • Astrophysics: Kepler and Spitzer (end of mission).

Artemis Program and Modern Human Spaceflight

For the Artemis program and the Commercial Crew Program, NASA has fully embraced the digital “media toolkit” model. These are comprehensive web portals created for each major flight.

• NASA Artemis I Press Kit
  This portal for the Artemis I mission is the template for modern NASA human spaceflight missions. It includes fact sheets, imagery, b-roll video, and detailed mission timelines.
• NASA Artemis Program
  The main Artemis program page is where future press kits and media resources for missions like Artemis II will be posted.
• NASA Commercial Crew Program
  This is the main page for the Commercial Crew Program. Media toolkits for SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner launches are typically posted on the main NASA.gov site and the NASA blogs in the days leading up to a launch.