NASA Beauty Pageants 1952 - 1970

Beginning in 1952, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California held "Miss Guided Missile" pageants.  
In 1959, the title changed to "Queen of Outer Space" -- mimicking the name of a 1958 Zsa Zsa Gabor 
film of the same name. These continued throughout the 1960s, halting in 1970.

While NASA never had an agency-wide pageant comprising women from all centers, the Lewis Space Center in Ohio
(today known as NASA Glenn) nonetheless crowned one "Miss NASA" each year between 1968 and 1973.

The first records of "Miss Guided Missile" at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Click on the photograph to see the original 2-page spread in the JPL archives.

Alane Hine, Miss Guided Missile 1955 at JPL's annual Spring Dance.
Crowned by none other than rocket scientist Walter Pickering, JPL's longest-serving director

Miss Guided Missile Alane Hine, again, this time with one of her actual projects, when
in January 1956, she posed beside the "Misiv Nut" (part of Fitzgerald Apparatus).
An accompanying article described the work of her group, the Solid Propellant Chemistry Section.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory was transferred to NASA in 1958, 
the same year the film "Queen of Outer Space" was released.
The following year, JPL's pageant was similarly (one imagines humorously) re-named.  
Here, name unknown, is the winner of the 1959 "Queen of Outer Space".

Another set of unknown female employees at the NASA Jet Propsulion Laboratory.
On the far left is the Queen of Outer Space, 1962.
The contest continued until 1970.

Jumping ahead, and across the country to the NASA Lewis Research Center, here is the
winner of the Miss NASA Pageant, 1968, beside an RL-10 Engine in the Rocket Operations Building (ROB).

Miss NASA, 1970, again at NASA Lewis (later renamed NASA Glenn Research Center) during the Apollo
era, pictured with the Agena rocket on a mobile learning center used by the facility's band.

Miss NASA 1971 with the returned Apollo 8 capsule, at NASA Lewis in Ohio.

    Miss NASA 1973, Merri Fahnenbruck, the last known pageant winner of the Apollo era,
staring at a moon rock.  Groovy eyeshadow, eh?