Astronaut Visits During the Cold War Era (1960s-1980s)  – Taiwan Insight

Written by Yi-Ting Chang. 

Cover image: President Chiang Kai-shek presented US astronaut Sheila Bowman and Walter Schirra with the Wings of the Republic of China Air Force. Image credit: “Photo Collection of the Leader (No. 60),” Artefacts of President Chiang Kai-shek, Academia Historica, Digital Archive No. 002-050101-00062-117. 
 

Building on the previous special issue‘s examination of Taiwan’s contemporary space missions, this post takes a historical perspective to uncover an often overlooked chapter of Taiwan’s space history. It reveals Taiwan’s lesser-known connections to outer space through pivotal events that embedded Taiwan in the wider chronicle of space exploration from the 1960s to the 1980s. 

During the 1960s, at the height of the Republic of China’s global prominence, the United States repeatedly sent astronauts to the East Asian region as part of diplomatic outreach. In February 1966, astronauts Walter M. Schirra Jr. and Frank Borman, command pilots of the Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 missions, respectively, visited Taiwan as part of a Far East tour designed to demonstrate the “scientific, technological, and educational values of the U.S. space program.” When the two astronauts and their wives arrived in Taiwan, President Chiang Kai-shek met with them and awarded each astronaut with the Wings of the Chinese National Air Force. 

Later that year, astronaut John Glenn visited Taipei in December. Glenn, a fighter pilot who had served in World War II, the Chinese Civil War, and the Korean War, joined NASA’s Mercury program and became the first American to orbit Earth and the third human in space in 1962. During his 1966 visit to the ROC, Vice President Yen Chia-kan formally received him at the Executive Yuan, and Glenn also met with Minister of National Defence Chiang Ching-kuo. He later served as chair of the East Asian and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee in the US Senate, where he helped pass the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. In other words, in 1966 alone, three American astronauts visited Taipei, bringing symbolic gifts from space to one of America’s strongest Cold War allies.  

Among these early visits, the ROC flag’s journey to outer space and back served as a powerful symbol of the ROC’s presence in early space exploration. According to an open document, the first ROC flag to travel to space was carried aboard the Gemini 6 mission in December 1965. Astronaut Schirra brought the flag with him on the mission and later presented it to Taiwan with an inscription that read: “This flag was carried aboard Gemini VI when it performed man’s first space rendezvous on December 13 with Gemini VII during its five million mile flight.” It may come as a surprise that the ROC symbolically participated in humanity’s first space rendezvous in 1965, early in the space race era. 

ROC Flag in Gemini VI. Image credit:  The US Gemini spacecraft carried the Republic of China flag. Image credit: Ministry of Culture Collections Network (CC BY 3.0 TW).  

Beyond this flag, photographs taken from outer space served as important diplomatic gifts. In 1968, the US ambassador presented a collection of space photographs to Chiang Ching-kuo, who responded with a letter stating: “I wish to thank you for the volume of photographs taken by the American astronauts during the orbital flights, Gemini III, IV and V. I found the photographs most interesting and revealing.” While we don’t know exactly which photographs were presented to Minister Chiang, we do know that Gemini V captured one image of southern Taiwan—possibly the first photographs of Taiwan taken from outer space. 

Taiwan’s image was captured by mission Gemini V mission in 1996. Image credit: NASA (public domain). 

In July 1969, during the Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon. President Chiang Kai-shek sent congratulations to US President Nixon following the successful Apollo 11 mission. Soon, US Vice President Spiro Agnew and his delegation visited Taipei in January 1970. In the delegation, astronaut Gene Cernan (pilot in Gemini 9A, lunar module pilot of Apollo 10, Commander of Apollo 17) brought gifts on behalf of US President Richard Nixon: a moon rock from the Apollo 11 mission, an ROC flag that had travelled to the Moon and back, and photographs of Earth taken from outer space. Once again, a flag served as a significant part of the diplomatic gift—this time the ROC flag that had journeyed to the Moon and back during the Apollo 11 mission. As part of its lunar missions, NASA brought flags from more than 135 nations to the Moon and later distributed them—along with samples of moon rocks—as diplomatic gifts to countries around the world. 

Three astronauts from Apollo 12 arrived in Taipei as part of their 20-nation post-mission goodwill tour titled “Bullseye” in 1970. Astronauts Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr. (commander of the Apollo 12 mission and the third person to walk on the Moon), Richard Gordon (Command Module Pilot), and Alan Bean (Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 12 and the fourth person to walk on the Moon), along with their wives, arrived in Taipei on March 20. President Chiang Kai-shek and First Lady Madame Chiang Soong May-ling formally received the astronauts. The crew members presented photographs of the Moon as gifts to President Chiang Kai-shek and the First Lady. The astronauts’ visit further underscores the close connection between outer space and the military. Accompanied by Taiwanese Navy Vice Admiral Yu Po-sheng, the all-Navy crew of Conrad, Gordon, and Bean laid a wreath at the National Revolutionary Martyrs’ Shrine. The astronauts’ wives went to the National Women’s League of the Republic of China.  

In the 1970s and 1980s, astronauts continued to visit Taiwan for evangelistic or business reasons. In 1972, astronaut James Irwin visited Taiwan as part of his global evangelistic tour. Colonel Irwin delivered public speeches at multiple universities. In 1974, astronaut Walter Schirra visited Taiwan again on a business trip arranged by the US Department of Commerce. Vice President Yen Chia-kan formally received him at the Presidential Office Building in Taipei. In 1984, two astronauts visited Taiwan: James A. Lovell Jr. (mission commander of Apollo 13) and James Irwin (Lunar Module pilot for Apollo 15 and the eighth person to walk on the Moon). The ROC government invited Lovell for National Day celebrations, while missionary organisations invited Irwin for evangelistic purposes. Although the ROC and the US formally severed diplomatic relations in 1979, astronaut visits continued throughout the 1980s in the form of commercial, educational, or evangelistic tours. 

By the 1980s, the intense geopolitical competition of the Space Race had largely subsided. Space exploration entered a new phase focused on regular Earth-orbit operations, exemplified by the launch and continued use of NASA’s Space Shuttle program. These missions no longer featured the extensive post-mission global tours that had characterised the Apollo 11 and 12 missions. Instead, the 1980s demonstrated much more diverse forms of astronaut visits. In 1987, astronaut Sultan bin Salman Al Saud, the first astronaut from an Arab country, visited Taipei. He was a former Royal Saudi Air Force pilot who had participated in the American STS-51-G Space Shuttle mission. Unlike previous American astronauts who had visited Taiwan, his presence demonstrated the close ties the ROC maintained with the Saudi Arabian royal family. It highlighted the diversity of astronauts participating in Space Shuttle missions. Yet, he was not the only Space Shuttle astronaut to visit Taiwan. 

Two years earlier, in 1985, astronaut Dr. Taylor Wang (王贛駿) visited Taiwan, his childhood home. As a Chinese-born Taiwanese American scientist, Taylor Wang became the first astronaut of Chinese origin to travel to outer space. He participated in the Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-51-B, a seven-day mission from April 29 to May 6, 1985. Born in China in 1940, Wang moved to Taiwan with his parents in 1952. He grew up in Taiwan before moving to the United States for his undergraduate studies, eventually obtaining a PhD in Physics from the University of California, Los Angeles. Wang was selected as a payload specialist for the Space Shuttle Challenger mission when NASA began allowing non-astronaut scientists to participate in space missions. 

According to standard protocol, each astronaut could bring a flag from their country of birth. However, NASA did not allow Wang to bring the Taiwan (ROC) flag officially, as Taiwan no longer maintained diplomatic ties with the United States. Consequently, he officially brought the Five-Star Red Flag, the national flag of the People’s Republic of China, to display in space. Wang later presented this flag as a gift to the government of the People’s Republic of China in 1985, and it is currently stored in the National Museum of China as the first PRC flag to travel to outer space. However, alongside the official PRC flag, Wang secretly brought an ROC flag with him to space, hidden in his undershirt. After his official visit to Beijing, Wang travelled to Taipei and presented the ROC flag as a gift to Premier Yu Kuo-hwa in Taipei. This marked the third time an ROC flag had travelled to outer space—this time concealed in an astronaut’s clothing while a PRC flag was also aboard. This incident illustrates the complex cross-strait tensions extending even into outer space, embodied through the flags, the astronaut’s complex identity, and the post-mission visits. 

Much more research needs to be conducted to understand how these events fit within Taiwan’s broader historical context. It also remains unknown how these experiences shaped Taiwanese leaders’ and citizens’ imagination regarding outer space. Nevertheless, all of these events demonstrate that the ROC has maintained a rich relationship with outer space since the height of the Space Race. Today’s outer space missions are largely built on new foundations established since the 1990s. Taiwan’s space missions, however, continue to reflect the deeper cross-strait conflicts that have lingered since the Cold War era. This brief overview demonstrates how Taiwan has been connected to outer space exploration throughout modern history. Taiwan’s space missions continue to grow and evolve. But this time, Taiwan has the possibility of cultivating its independent space missions, drawing on local space capacity that will continue to shape Taiwan’s historical narrative. As new space missions prepare to launch—from Artemis to Mars exploration—what will future post-mission space tours look like? What messages will they deliver? Only time will tell. 

Yi-Ting Chang 張怡婷 is a PhD Candidate in the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. She was a residential researcher at the Taiwan Space Agency and a Research Fellow and Team lead in the Oxford China Policy Lab. Her broad research interests lie in critical geopolitics, social science of outer space, and science and technology studies (STS).  

This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘Taiwan Research Hub Early Career Scholars Workshop‘.