The Ordway Award is named in memory of Frederick I. Ordway III (1927-2014), human spaceflight advocate and chronicler of the history of rocketry and space travel.  The award recognizes exceptional, sustained efforts to inform and educate on spaceflight and its history through one or more media, including (1) writing, editing, or publishing, (2) preparation and/or presentation of exhibits; or (3) production for distribution through film, television, art, or other non-print media.  The award is managed by the AAS History Committee.

RECIPIENTS – 2022

Andrew Chaikin is recognized for his role in re-introducing and popularizing space exploration history through his celebrated books and articles. His work focusing on the Apollo astronauts has been credited with reigniting the public’s interest in the moon landings 25 years after the last step was taken off the lunar surface.

Chaikin is perhaps best known as the author of “A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts,” which has been widely held as the definitive account of the first moon missions. Published in 1994, the book served as the primary basis for Tom Hanks’ 12-part HBO miniseries, “From the Earth to the Moon.”

Chaikin’s more recent titles include: “Voices from the Moon,” “Mission Control: This is Apollo,” “A Passion for Mars: Intrepid Explorers of the Red Planet” and “Air and Space: The National Air and Space Museum Story of Flight.” He also collaborated with astronaut and artist Alan Bean to write “Apollo: An Eyewitness Account.”

Chaikin served as an executive editor at SPACE.com and is the former editor of Space Illustrated and Sky & Telescope magazines. Chaikin also developed presentations about the management lessons learned from Apollo to benefit teams at NASA and other government agencies. An amateur musician, songwriter and occasional space artist, Chaikin is one of the founders of the International Association of Astronomical Artists.

Space artist Pamela Lee is recognized for her sustained efforts to depict spaceflight and inspire interest in space exploration through the medium of art. She has taken a leading role in creating international symposiums, workshops and exhibitions focused on space art, aiming to cultivate enthusiasm for astronomy and astronautics, especially among young people.

Ms Lee is a founding member of the International Association of Astronomical Artists since 1982 and a career-long member of the NASA Fine Art Program. Her paintings have flown on the Space Shuttle and MIR, and they have been carried to Mars by the Phoenix Mars Lander and the Mars 96 Lander. Her artwork permanently resides in the NASA Art Collection, the Yuri Gagarin Museum Art Collection in Gorodok (Star City), Russia, and in private collections worldwide. She has also contributed to a number of important books, including “Out of the Cradle,” “Cycles of Fire,” “In the Stream of Stars” and the recent “Beauty of Space Art.”

Perhaps her most important work has been in using art to promote international education and cooperation. She initiated and then facilitated artist exchanges between the NASA Art Program and the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos, and also took part in the Young Astronauts/Young Cosmonauts Exchange in the former Soviet Union and other art-focused gatherings in the United States, Russia, Iceland, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. Pamela Lee merits recognition for both her own impressive portfolio of space art and the breadth of her influence internationally on established and aspiring space artists.

RECIPIENTS – 2021

Robert Pearlman is recognized for his unique and broad contributions to preservation of spaceflight history, creating communities of spaceflight professionals and fans from around the globe on his online platform and through writing, film, and activities that reach all ages and levels of interest, creating the strong human interest that feeds national and international commitment.

After developing the first forum to connect the public with astronauts online in 1996, Mr. Pearlman created collectSPACE, a community and news website serving space history enthusiasts and professionals worldwide. Mr. Pearlman is also a contributing writer to Space.com and was the first director of communications and later marketing director for Space Adventures, the first company to book privately-funded individuals on flights to the International Space Station.

Mr. Pearlman is a member of the leadership board of For All Moonkind, Inc. and is on the History Committee of the American Astronautical Society. He is the co-author of “Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space,” published by Smithsonian Books in 2018 and served as a technical consultant for Damien Chazelle’s 2018 Neil Armstrong bio-pic “First Man.” Mr. Pearlman was also the historical consultant for the 2019 CNN Films and NEON documentary “Apollo 11” directed by Todd Douglas Miller.

A 2009 inductee into the U.S. Space Camp Hall of Fame, Mr. Pearlman’s diverse and inclusive activities have helped to grow and center spaceflight history as a passion and important academic community. His work exemplifies the innovation and commitment needed to preserve spaceflight history for years to come.

Asif A. Siddiqi, PhD, is recognized for sustained excellence as a prolific scholar of Soviet space history and the broader aspects of space exploration on a global scale.

Dr. Siddiqi is one of the top scholars writing in English on this subject in the world. His dissertation, “The Red Rockets’ Red Glare: Spaceflight and the Russian Imagination, 1857–1957,” was published by Cambridge University Press in 2010. Its publication had a major influence on the historiography of Soviet space studies. It is a history of the quest for spaceflight in Russia/Soviet Union beginning with the theories of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and ending with the launch of Sputnik. In it, Dr. Siddiqi focused specifically on the social and cultural context of both spaceflight advocacy and rocket engineering. A key contribution of this work is its explanation of how science and technology shaped broader social and political issues in the Cold War.

Dr. Siddiqi’s superb, comprehensive history of the Soviet space program during the Cold War, Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race (NASA SP-4408), was issued as part of the NASA History Series in 2000. This manuscript received the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) History Manuscript Award for 1998 and the American Astronautical Society’s Eugene Emme Astronautical Literature Award for 2000. The significance of this book was also manifest by the decision of the University Press of Florida to reprint, in 2003, the work as a two-volume paperback—Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge and The Soviet Space Race with Apollo.

Dr. Siddiqi’s editing of an English translation of the four-volume memoir of Boris Chertok, a Soviet/Russian rocket engineer, is also a significant contribution to historical knowledge about the Soviet space program. Appearing as Rockets and People in the NASA History Series, 2005–2011, this work fills a critical gap in knowledge published in English concerning the Soviet rocket program between World War 2 and the end of the Cold War. In each volume, Dr. Siddiqi illuminated the narrative of Boris Chertok with annotations and introductions, as well as ensuring the translation into English accurately depicted the Russian narrative.

RECIPIENTS – 2020

Bill Ingalls is recognized for sustained excellence in memorializing milestones in U.S. space programs and policy through his artistically crafted photographic images. 

Bill has been a photographer based at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC since 1989.  He has traveled the world photographing space events. His assignments have taken him from the Oval Office to the hearing rooms of Capitol Hill; from hot and humid Kennedy Space Center to the brutally cold Kazakh steppes, recording U.S. and Russian launches and landings; and from marking the tragedy of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident to capturing the exaltation of landing the Curiosity rover on Mars. Bill has photographed some of our country’s most historic moments in space, including the first launch in 1995 of a U.S. astronaut on a Russian rocket, the final landing of the Space Shuttle Atlantis in July 2011, the 2012 burial at sea of Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, and the recent launch and return to Earth of the first American astronauts to go into orbit from U.S. territory since 2011. 

Bill’s photographs, in addition to recording key moments in space history, have consistently had high aesthetic content. They have appeared in hundreds of magazines, newspapers, and books throughout the world, including National Geographic, Time, The Washington Post, Fortune, People, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as on television broadcasts. One of Ingalls’ NASA colleagues recently commented “Bill is so much more than a photographer, he’s a storyteller. Bill takes us on this amazing journey of spaceflight through this camera lens, whether it’s the beauty and power of a launch or the exhaustion and excitement of an astronaut’s return home. He’s able to turn the vastness of space into very intimate moments. It’s a special talent.” 

Roger D. Launius, Ph.D., is recognized for sustained excellence as a prolific scholar, author, and advocate of space history. 

First as Chief Historian for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (1990-2002) and then as Curator, Space History Department Chair, and Associate Director for Research and Collections at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (2002-2017), Roger Launius has had a formative influence on the history of aerospace technology, science, practice, and policy as a professional field. He is a well-known author of books and articles for both the scholarly and popular presses, and a frequently quoted expert in the print and electronic media.  

Launius has reached even wider audiences through developing television programs with The Great Courses and The Smithsonian Channel, lecturing across the nation and abroad, and offering on-campus seminars. He has for many years been the leading promoter of the discipline of space history through his encouragement of other scholars, mentoring graduate students through research projects and internships, and making space history a visible activity in relevant historical societies. He helped establish new journals and new book series to create channels for space history scholarship, and he organized various space history forums and symposia to create a community of scholars to further this discipline. While attending to the growth of space history as a professional field, he also nurtured its spread into the popular domain, especially through exhibitions and public programs at the world’s premier air and space museum.  

Roger Launius can fairly be called the staunchest and most influential advocate for space history as a field of research, publication, and public impact. His career has vastly enriched our understanding of humanity’s movement into space. 

The University of Nebraska Press is recognized for its Outward Odyssey Series (A Personal History of Spaceflight) documenting key topics in the history of spaceflight 

The University of Nebraska Press began publishing the Outward Odyssey Series (Series Editor, Colin Burgess) in 2007. These popular histories place equal emphasis on Soviets and Americans and give priority to people over technology and nationalism. They focus on the early rocket experimenters, the astronauts and cosmonauts, and the engineers and scientists, who changed forever their world and ours.  

The University of Nebraska Press has produced a steady stream of well-researched, readable volumes on a wide variety of topics in spaceflight history. As of 2020, there have been nineteen (19) titles in the Outward Odyssey Series. A number of them were finalists for the AAS Emme Award for Spaceflight Literature and one title (Ambassadors from Earth: Pioneering Explorations with Unmanned Spacecraft by Jay Gallentine) received the Emme Award in 2009. 

The Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project (VMMEPP) is recognized for preservation of archives and artifacts associated with the Viking missions to Mars and educational outreach using the Viking missions as a STEM catalyst. 

As the United States continues on its path to the human exploration of Mars, with the recent launch of the Perseverance rover and plans for the Orion Program, the work of VMMEPP is critical in establishing the legacy upon which we are building. It also serves to capture the imagination and keep the fires of interest burning amongst the generation that will bring the dream to fruition. 

The Viking Mars Missions Education and Preservation Project (VMMEPP) was founded in 2008 dedicated to global education with a special focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), collaborative learning, and international cooperation under the guidance of Project Director Rachel Tillman. The VMMEPP is focused on preserving the history, artifacts, original documents, and data from the Viking Missions to Mars, inspiring current and future leaders and thinkers, and instilling collaboration and equity into missions of tomorrow. In addition, VMMEPP has conducted hundreds of oral history interviews (audio and video) with individuals who were involved in the Viking Mission. This is reflected in their motto of “Inspire—Educate—Collaborate.” 

RECIPIENTS – 2019

Univelt is recognized for sustained excellence in documenting space history through production of AAS publications.

Robert H. Jacobs and his father, Horace Jacobs, have provided one of the great pillars of the space history community for sixty years. Their imprint, Univelt, has documented the proceedings of the American Astronautical Society almost since its inception. Their ongoing AAS History Series and the companion “Advances in the Astronautical Sciences” series, along with the “Science and Technology” series (1964-2013), represent a massive repository of space history information that beggars parallel. Without their effort, going all the way back to Horace’s work in the late 1950s, much of the character and detail of America’s space history would be lost. In many instances, the AAS publications represent the only remaining documentary evidence of many early American astronautical theories and studies. Due to Univelt’s later affiliation with the International Astronautical Federation’s history committee, the annual history publications represent one of the only global records of space history research, providing a truly international forum for the students of space history.

Dr. John M. Logsdon is recognized for sustained excellence in space policy analysis.

Dr. John M. Logsdon has spent a lifetime analyzing and recording space policy. Along the way, he founded and guided an educational institution dedicated to space policy and has written numerous award-winning books and articles on space policy and space history. He has continually encouraged and mentored graduate students and other budding historians and policy wonks. He has never been afraid to take an unpopular position on a space policy decision and provide the rationale and documentation for that position. Dr. Logsdon’s dedication has greatly strengthened the field of space policy. Logsdon has been on the faculty of George Washington University since 1970 and is currently a professor emeritus of political science and international affairs. He was the founder, and from 1987–2008 was the Director, of the Space Policy Institute at GWU. He has also served on the faculty of the International Space University. In 2003, Logsdon was a member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, in charge of the team researching and analyzing space history and policy as it related to the loss of Columbia. In 2008-09, Logsdon served as the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. John is a prolific author of space policy analysis including The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest (MIT Press, 1970). He was also the general editor of the seven-volume series Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program (NASA, 1995). More recently, he is the author of the award-winning John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), After Apollo? Richard Nixon and the American Space Program (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and Ronald Reagan and the Space Frontier (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

John Noble Wilford is recognized for sustained excellence in print journalism through his coverage of spaceflight activities.

John Noble Wilford has been one of the most ardent and articulate communicators of space science and exploration for decades from his perch at the venerable New York Times and in his independent writing. Wilford was a long-time science reporter and science correspondent, assistant national news editor, director of science news, and featured columnist at the New York Times. He is the author of thousands of columns and ten books, including the New York Times’ front-page story of the Apollo 11 landing (“Men Walk On Moon”). Wilford received the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1984 for “reporting on a wide variety of scientific topics of national import.” He was also a member of the team that received the Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for investigative coverage of the Space Shuttle Challenger accident. Wilford’s career at the New York Times began in 1965. During his tenure, he covered the U.S. space program with a passion that ranged from thorough and objective reporting to poetic romanticism and a sense of the mythical, to occasional disappointment and criticism. He has always been insightful, with a command of language and verbal imagery takes readers to the heart of space exploration and its cultural significance.

RECIPIENTS – 2018

Dennis R. Jenkins is recognized for sustained excellence in documenting aviation and space history and in making US aerospace achievements accessible to the public. An aerospace engineer, manager, and author, Mr. Jenkins ranks among the most prolific of aviation and space historians. He has published more than 50 books on subjects as diverse as WWII fighters and bombers, hypersonic X-planes, launch facilities, Apollo 11, spacecraft re-entry systems, pressure suits, the space shuttle, and servicing the Hubble Space Telescope. His magnum opus is the three-volume definitive technical history, Space Shuttle: Developing an Icon, published in 2017 by Specialty Press. Mr. Jenkins’ written work is well informed by his hands-on experience as an engineer and project manager, his meticulous research, and his gift for writing intelligibly about technical matters for readers at various levels of familiarity with his subjects.

Ron Miller is recognized for sustained excellence in the field of space art and offering a tantalizing glimpse of the future. An accomplished and prolific space artist and author, Mr. Miller has provided a “bridge” between science fact and science fiction for over 40 years. He worked closely with Fred Ordway on the IBM exhibition and book, Blueprint for Space (Smithsonian Press, 1992), contributing a chapter to the book and recreating three missing Collier’s magazine paintings by Chesley Bonestell. Mr. Miller’s richly illustrated books narrating both the possible futures and the past of space exploration have fueled the imagination of many future engineers, scientists and artists. In fact, one of the stamps he designed for the U.S. Postal Service in 1991 is credited with helping inspire the New Horizons mission to Pluto. The richness of his visions of space, built on his familiarity with the history of dreams of spaceflight, has allowed Mr. Miller to provide us with a glimpse of the future.

Miles O’Brien is recognized for sustained excellence in journalism through his coverage of spaceflight activities. Mr. O’Brien is a journalist, writer, and producer who has been a familiar face on television for more than 30 years. He has won a multitude of awards for science reporting, including four Emmys and a Peabody. Mr. O’Brien started his professional career in television in Washington DC, and spent a decade reporting for TV stations around the country before beginning a 16-year tenure as CNN’s space and aviation correspondent. He served as chair of the Education and Public Outreach Committee of NASA’s Advisory Council for three years. An accomplished pilot and scuba diver, O’Brien also serves on the boards of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, LessCancer.org, and the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation. For the last decade, Mr. O’Brien has been providing special reports for PBS News Hour and is one of the most respected voices in science journalism.