NASA and Peanuts Worldwide announced the signing of a multi-year ‘Space Act Agreement’. The partnership is engineered to inspire a passion for space exploration and STEM education among students.
Fifty years later, the brand-new agreement extends the NASA and Peanuts partnership to students and fans across the country.
The new era of collaboration aims to create entertainment content including publishing, merchandising and interactive projects that can help popularize science and tech education.
The agreement builds on a historic partnership that began during the Apollo missions of the 1960s when Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz gave NASA permission to use Snoopy on the Agency’s spaceflight safety materials. In 1968, NASA expanded the collaboration when it introduced the Silver Snoopy award, a special honor given to NASA employees and contractors for outstanding achievements related to safety or mission success in human spaceflight.
“My husband, Charles Schulz, fully embraced a collaboration with NASA for Snoopy and he was inspired to create a series of original comic strips detailing Snoopy’s fantastical journeys through space,” said Jeannie Schulz, widow of Charles M. Schulz.
The partnership reached new heights in 1969, when NASA sent Peanuts into space, naming the Apollo 10 command and lunar modules “Charlie Brown” and “Snoopy.”
The new deal will offer a variety of creative, interactive ways for aficionados of all ages to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 10 next year, and NASA’s historic Moon missions.
“My father once told me that when NASA selected his characters, Charlie Brown and Snoopy, to be the names chosen for the modules for the Apollo 10 mission on its trip to the Moon, that it was the proudest moment in his career,” said Craig Schulz, producer of Fox’s The Peanuts Movie in 2015 and the youngest son of Charles M. Schulz.
More details on the Peanuts space effort will come out next week at San Diego’s Comic-Con International.
