JFK Remembered: Space Program

33 artifacts in this set

President John F. Kennedy's vision to explore the "new frontier" of outer space was an overt Cold War strategy against the Soviet Union, which had launched the first man into outer space on April 12, 1961. Kennedy's bold vision for a stepped-up space program -- that would land a man on the moon before the decade was out -- ignited the public's imagination. Americans cheered every new achievement.

Detailed Description

Lunchbox with Space Theme, 1963

Lunchbox

The first pictorial lunchboxes, introduced in 1950, featured Hopalong Cassidy. Since then, generations of children have proudly sported pictorial images of their favorite interests on the sides of their school lunchboxes. The 1960s were an age of space exploration, beginning with the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1957 through the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon in 1969.