AAS is pleased to announce Robert Pearlman and Asif A. Siddiqi as the 2021 Ordway Award winners! This memorable award recognizes efforts to inform and educate on spaceflight and its history. The two winners have made tremendous contributions to creating an inclusive spaceflight community, and extensively researching Soviet spaceflight history.
Robert Pearlman is recognized for his unique and broad contributions to the preservation of spaceflight history, creating communities of spaceflight professionals and fans from around the globe on his online platform and through writing, film, and activities that reach all ages and levels of interest. As a 2009 inductee into the U.S. Space Camp Hall of Fame, Mr. Pearlman’s diverse and inclusive activities have helped to grow and center spaceflight history as a passion and important academic community.
Asif A. Siddiqi, Ph.D., is recognized for sustained excellence as a prolific scholar of Soviet space history and the broader aspects of space exploration on a global scale. Dr. Siddiqi is one of the top scholars writing in English on this subject in the world. Dr. Siddiqi’s superb, comprehensive history of the Soviet space program during the Cold War, Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race (NASA SP-4408), was issued as part of the NASA History Series in 2000. Dr. Siddiqi has set the standard for comprehending the Soviet space program during the Cold War, along with translating work from Soviet rocket engineers.
Mr. Pearlman and Dr.Siddiqi both will be recognized during the 2021 Wernher von Braun Symposium taking place October 12-14 in Huntsville, Alabama. Full details of the Ordway Award can be found here.