posted 06-13-2026 04:42 PM               

International Space Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and 50th Anniversary Celebration

On October 3, 2026, the New Mexico Museum of Space History will host its 50th Anniversary Gala at the Tays Center in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Titled "Golden Jubilee: 50 Years of Honoring Yesterday and Inspiring Tomorrow," this special evening will pay tribute to the museum's legacy and give a glimpse into the future. The highlight of the gala will be the induction of a new class into the International Space Hall of Fame.

Chosen from a field of 45 distinguished nominees submitted nationwide, this year's inductees exemplify extraordinary achievements in space science and exploration. Honorees include the pioneering women of the Mercury 13, Swiss astrophysicist Michel Mayor, NASA astronauts Senator Mark Kelly and his twin brother Scott Kelly, NASA mathematician Creola Katherine Johnson, and Dolores "Dee" O'Hara, the first nurse to care for America's astronauts.

The museum first opened its doors in 1976 as the International Space Hall of Fame, dedicated to recognizing the imagination, achievements, and determination of those who have advanced humanity's understanding of the universe and expanded the boundaries of space exploration. Today, the Hall of Fame includes 174 inductees, including one team.

More details about the 2026 inductees:

• The Mercury 13 were a group of thirteen American women who participated in a privately funded research program aimed to test and screen women for spaceflight from 1959-1960. Their names are Jerrie Cobb, Myrtle Cagle, Janey Hart, Rhea Hurrle (Woltman), Jean Hixson, Irene Leverton, Sarah Gorelick (Ratley), Jerri Sloan (Truhill), Bernice Steadman, Gene Nora Stumbough (Jessen), Wally Funk, Jan Dietrich, and Marion Dietrich.

  The program was operated by William Lovelace II, a private contractor for NASA. Lovelace operated his clinic in Albuquerque, NM, and is an Inductee as well. Although all the candidates were accomplished pilots with over 1,000 hours of flight experience each and performed as well, and sometimes better, than their male counterparts in the tests, they were not allowed into the astronaut program due to the politics of the time. The only member of the group who made it to space, 60 years later, was Wally Funk who flew aboard a Blue Origin flight in 2021.

• Mark and Scott Kelly, the famous astronaut twins who participated in the landmark Twins Study helped NASA researchers better understand how the human body changes from exposure to spaceflight.Ten research teams observed what physiological, molecular, and cognitive changes could happen by comparing retired astronaut Scott Kelly while he was in space, to his identical twin brother, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, who remained on Earth. NASA will use the valuable data collected for decades, helping to ensure the health and safety of the men and women who venture into space.

• Michel Mayor is a Swiss astrophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of Geneva's Department of Astronomy. In 2019, Mayor, along with Jim Peebles and Didier Queloz, won the Nobel Prize in Physics along with the 2010 Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize, and 2015 Kyoto Prize. They discovered the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star, 51 Pegasi b, and were awarded the prize for the discovering the exoplanet and "contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth's place in the cosmos". Mayor's work focused on improving instrumentation to help detect exoplanets and measure their properties. He, with others, discovered Gliese 581c, the first extrasolar planet in a star's habitable zone, and the lightest exoplanet ever detected around a main sequence star: Gliese 581e.

• Creola Katherine Johnson is known as an American human computer. Her calculations of orbital mechanics were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights. Her career spanned 33 years, starting with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and continuing through NASA. Johnson pioneered the use of computers in performing tasks previously requiring humans through her mastery of complex manual calculations. She is lauded as "one of the first African-American women to work with NASA as a scientist". She calculated trajectories, launch windows, and emergency return paths for Project Mercury, and rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar Module and command module. Her calculations were essential to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, and she even worked on plans for a human mission to Mars.

• Ms. Dolores Dee O'Hara, RN became the first aerospace nurse with the astronauts of the Mercury Program in 1959 and laid the groundwork for the field of space nursing. She was the official, and only, nurse to the Mercury Seven astronauts and their families, and continued on to support the Gemini Program, Apollo astronauts, and Skylab. A graduate of Air Force officers' training at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, Second Lieutenant O'Hara was assigned to Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 1959 in support of the Mercury Program. In 1964, she resigned from the Air Force and moved to the Manned Spacecraft Center (Johnson Space Center) to set up the Medicine Flight Clinic. Throughout her career, she was part of every launch in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. In addition, after Skylab, she was invited to participate in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Program and the first shuttle flight in 1981. Her studies in bed rest at Ames Research Center discovered physiological parallels between bed rest and spaceflight conditions, which were foundational for ground-based studies of astronaut orbital health.