Jul 29, 2022 2 min read

The Senator John Heinz History Center recently added a collection of artifacts, photos, documents, and other archival information to its Rauh Jewish History Program & Archives that explores the life of Pittsburgh astronaut Jerome “Jay” Apt.

The collection became available for public viewing last week, around the time of the 53rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Apt witnessed the launch of the Apollo 11 mission on July 16, 1969, at Cape Canaveral, photographing the monumental event for Modern Rocketry magazine, a publication he helped found at Harvard University. Apt’s press pass and photos of the Apollo 11 launch are included in the collection.

A Pittsburgh native and 1967 graduate of Shady Side Academy, Apt would join NASA in 1980, working for its jet propulsion lab and as a flight controller at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, before becoming an astronaut. After years of training, Apt flew on four space missions and logged more than 847 hours in space.

The History Center collection traces Apt’s lifelong journey, including his childhood in Pittsburgh, career at NASA, his best-selling book, “Orbit,” and his tenure as director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Other materials include personal journals written during his solo trips to Alaska and overseas to Greenland.

Artifacts can be seen online museumcollections.heinzhistorycenter.org.