This is a prime example of Barbie's position as a champion for women's equality: she is equal parts hyper-feminine and a successful businesswoman, demonstrating that a successful career is not a masculine trait. The playset features Barbie space explorer doll, her puppy and more than 20 out-of-this-world pieces that inspire kids to explore and experiment. This box from 1994 Astronaut Barbie is in the Museum’s collection, along with the corresponding doll.

It's fascinating to learn that there was this earlier doll that carried such personal significance for the crew and I think it only highlights the ways that flown memorabilia illustrates how much for the astronauts and the ground crews those spacecraft were their workplaces and they personalized them the same way that you or I would personalize our office desk or a home space," Weitekamp said. Since then, the doll has remained at Denison's home, which may be why Mattel, NASA, the Smithsonian and just about everyone else forgot about Barbie's actual first spaceflight. If you have a non-BNPL balance, you will still need to make at least your minimum payment as shown on your statement. In a clear shift away from the pomp and frills of the 1980s, both of these dolls wear uniforms that much more closely resemble authentic astronaut gear.

The playset features Barbie® space explorer doll, her puppy and more than 20 out-of-this-world pieces that inspire kids to explore and experiment. By the mid-1980s, the idea of a woman in space (plastic or human) was nothing new, but this was the first time that a Black Barbie doll became an astronaut. The photo has been signed and inscribed by four of the five members of the STS-38 crew, who adopted Barbie as their mission's "mascot. Barbie astronaut doll is ready to launch a new story with the equipment needed to make her journey -- a shimmery spacesuit, helmet and gloves.

The crew Denison was helping to train at the time — STS-38 commander Dick Covey, pilot Frank Culbertson and mission specialists Carl Meade, Bob Springer and Sam Gemar — spent hours at a time in the simulator, so finding Barbie offered a small break, as well as a source of levity.If you are exercising your right to change your mind you must send off the goods within 14 days of telling us you wish to end the contract.

Another impressive coup for a Barbie doll," the 1992 issue of Mattel Matters read, "the only question now is, what's left? b) If you want to end the contract because of something we have done or have told you we are going to do, further details can be found in clause 1.

Mattel did not know about Barbie being aboard STS-38 at the time, but learned of the doll's mission a couple of years later, when the company highlighted the flight in a newsletter for its employees. Update (July 31, 2023): Since the publication of this blog, the National Air and Space Museum has learned that a Barbie doll was taken aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis on the classified STS-38 mission in 1990, making the Space Discovery Barbie dolls in our collection not the first Barbie dolls to go to space, but the first to visit the International Space Station. Includes Samantha Cristoforetti Barbie doll wearing spacesuit, helmet, doll stand and Certificate of Authenticity. A NASA photograph shows Steve Denison's Barbie doll floating aboard the flight deck of the space shuttle Atlantis in November 1990. Unlike Astronaut Barbie, who represents a far-off future goal that children must wait to achieve until they are older, Space Camp Barbie represents a real and immediately attainable way for children to engage with and study space.