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Of astronauts and artists: The romance of space flight

By Helen Fields

8 June 2011

NASA patronage of the arts is commemorated at NASA / ART: 50 Years of Exploration, at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC

IN THE summer of 1969, artist Mitchell Jamieson travelled from his home outside Washington DC to Pearl Harbor, where he boarded the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. After a voyage a few hundred miles to the south-west, the massive ship waited on the open sea for an arrival from the sky: the Apollo 11 astronauts, back from the first moon landing.

For days, Jamieson was able to eavesdrop on the astronauts’ transmissions from space. He heard the…

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