Space program illo
How do space programs get their names? Illustration by Lucille Clerc
How do space programs get their names? Elizabeth Coen | Monterey, California
NASA and others have long sought symbolic names that reflect the nature of a given program and serve as inspiration. In the late 1950s, Abe Silverstein, NASA’s director of spaceflight development, suggested program names that drew on the myths of ancient Greece and Rome. Mercury, the ancient Roman messenger of the gods, was the name chosen for the first program of human spaceflight. Gemini, the mythological twins, lent their name to the first mission with two astronauts in the vehicle. Apollo, though god of the sun, was selected to represent the lunar voyages because of his great power in the sky. The name of Artemis was chosen for the upcoming lunar missions since she was the twin sister of Apollo. New commercial ventures also use inspirational names, though the references are often newer: SpaceX calls its rockets Falcon as a reference to the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, and Blue Origin’s rockets are New Shepard and New Glenn in reference to the original Mercury astronauts, Alan Shepard and John Glenn. —Jennifer Levasseur, museum curator, National Air and Space Museum
Is it possible to know if woolly mammoths had some of the same social, caring personality characteristics as today’s elephants? Patricia A. Ryan | Londonderry, New Hampshire
Mammoths probably exhibited a lot of similar behaviors to elephants in terms of herd structures. Their diets are reasonably well known due to the findings in the digestive tracts of mammoth mummies. There is evidence that baby mammoths, like modern elephants, consumed the feces of adults to develop the microbiomes they needed for digestion. There is some debated evidence of limited mammoth hunting by groups of humans. Like modern elephants, mammoths were probably dangerous enough to hurt an individual hunter. Genetics reveal that before mammoths became extinct, they grew isolated, most notably on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean. This led to inbreeding. Yet genetics offer very little direct information about mammoth behavior. We still don’t know enough about the expression of various genes in the elephant family to be able to infer how those genes shaped the behavior of earlier animals. —Michael Campana, computational genomics scientist, National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute
What is the best movie ever made about a U.S. president? Anne Singer | New York City
American filmmakers have been making movies about presidents since the earliest days of the medium. While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the short 1896 film “McKinley at Home, Canton, Ohio” (the first film about a president), I would certainly make time for the 2012 Steven Spielberg film Lincoln. I think it’s the most incisive, compelling and accurate movie depiction of an American president. The actor Daniel Day-Lewis captures the awesome responsibility of the office and the immense challenges of the Civil War era, humanizing the hallowed leader as he navigates a political landscape that was just as complicated and contentious as today’s world. —Ryan Lintelman, entertainment curator, National Museum of American History
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This article is a selection from the April/May 2025 issue of Smithsonian magazine