After the weeklong STS-51D mission was over, one of the space-flown statues was placed on display, and the other was melted down to create copper seals, which were then sold to the public by the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Centennial Commission.<\/p>\n
The copper dated back to the statue\u2019s original 1875 to 1884 construction. A gift from France, the Statue of Liberty was originally intended to commemorate the United States\u2019 centennial in 1876.<\/p>\n
Now, as the US enters its next 250 years, there have been an additional four decades of spaceflights when other objects from American history have been carried into Earth orbit. Which raises the question: What is the oldest known piece of Americana to have been launched off the planet?<\/p>\n
Oldest astronaut, oldest artifact?<\/h2>\n
For the purposes of this article, Americana refers to any piece of memorabilia that dates as far back as the Revolutionary War and the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. There are certainly older objects that have entered space\u2014a 1611 Jamestown \u201cluggage tag\u201d from the first permanent English settlement was flown on Atlantis<\/em> in 2007, for example\u2014but fall outside this article\u2019s scope.<\/p>\n John Glenn, one of the original Mercury<\/em> astronauts and a US senator, was the oldest person to fly into space when he launched on a 1998 Discovery<\/em> mission at the age of 77. Among the items he chose to take with him were two connected to early American history.<\/p>\n A 1993 reprint of Thomas Jefferson\u2019s 1801 book, the \u201cManual of Parliamentary Practice,\u201d was flown by John Glenn on the space shuttle Discovery<\/em> in 1998.<\/p>\n Credit: \u201cAfter consultation with staff in the Office of Senate Curator, the Senate Historical Office and Senate Library, Senator Glenn selected this \u2018Manual of Parliamentary Practice\u2019 for the STS-95 OFK,\u201d the Senate Curator\u2019s Office described in a 2023 article, referring to the Official Flight Kit that held mementos and memorabilia for post-flight presentation. \u201cThe \u2018Manual of Parliamentary Practice\u2019 was a practical choice because of its relatively small size and weight, but it is also a meaningful text in Senate history.\u201d<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n Written by Thomas Jefferson in 1801 while he was serving as vice president (and therefore the head of the Senate), the manual influenced both houses of Congress as to how to approach order and decorum.<\/p>\n Glenn also took with him a 13-star flag that was used to identify General George Washington on the battlefield. Believed to be inspired by the details on the general\u2019s uniform in 1777, Washington\u2019s Headquarters Flag (also known as the Commander-in-Chief standard) flew with Glenn in the lead-up to the bicentennial commemorations of Washington\u2019s death in 1799.<\/p>\n John Glenn flew a replica of General George Washington\u2019s 1777 Headquarters Flag aboard the space shuttle Discovery<\/em> in 1998, in the then-lead-up to the bicentennial commemorations of Washington\u2019s death in 1799.<\/p>\n Credit: Both the flag and the manual, though, were reproductions. The originals are in museums and deemed too fragile and irreplaceable to risk being launched into space. The copy that Glenn flew was a 1993 reprint, and the flag was made for Glenn to fly in 1998.<\/p>\n Another replica flag steeped in American history was aboard the International Space Station from November 2014 through June 2015. NASA astronaut Terry Virts was provided the 15-star flag by Fort McHenry in Maryland, after it was flown over the historic site for Flag Day during the bicentennial year of the Battle of Baltimore. The original of that flag was seen by Francis Scott Key to \u201cyet wave,\u201d leading him to write a poem that became the US anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner<\/em>, in 1814.<\/p>\n In May 1869, a 17.6-karat gold spike was used to ceremonially complete the First Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory Summit in the then-Utah Territory. Today, the site is a National Historical Park located near where Northrop Grumman builds and tests solid rocket motors for space launch vehicles.<\/p>\n Ninety-six years later, a replica of the Golden Spike was launched on Atlantis<\/em> with the STS-38 crew.<\/p>\n It was another spike, however, that is believed to be the oldest Americana artifact to have flown into space.<\/p>\n Is this the oldest piece of Americana to fly into space? This copper spike was an original component of the hull of the USS Constitution<\/em>, dating back to 1787. It was flown aboard Atlantis<\/em> on the first space shuttle mission to dock with the Russian space station Mir in 1995.<\/p>\n Credit: \u201cIn honor of the 200th anniversary of the commissioning of the USS Constitution<\/em>, \u2018Old Ironsides,\u2019 this copper spike, an original component of the hull of the USS Constitution<\/em>, [was] flown on the United States space shuttle,\u201d a plaque presenting the nail reads.<\/p>\n The spike, which was removed from the ship in 1992 and dates back to 1797, was aboard Atlantis<\/em> for the entirety of the STS-71 mission, from June 27 through July 7, 1995. The mission marked the first rendezvous and docking between a NASA shuttle and the former Russian space station, Mir.<\/p>\n Another Constitution<\/em> piece, a fragment of wood of similar age, was launched into orbit with the Hubble Space Telescope on STS-31. The piece was on loan at the US Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Maryland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Did you know that the space shuttle once launched the Statue of Liberty into space? In fact, there were two \u201cLady Liberties\u201d on board Discovery when it lifted off on its fourth flight in April 1985. To be fair, each statue was only 15 inches tall (38.1 centimeters), but they were also each made of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43143"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/news-070326b-lg-640x868.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n U.S. Senate Collection<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n![\"a](\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/news-070326c-lg-640x360.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Museum of the American Revolution<\/p>\n<\/figure>\nNailing down the (possible) oldest<\/h2>\n
![\"a](\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/news-070326e-lg-640x516.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n USS Constitution Museum<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n