Editor’s note: On the anniversary of the first launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery, we’ll hear from Dr. Ellen R. Stofan, planetary geologist and the John and Adrienne Mars Director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, about a new 360 film on board the Shuttle that launched the Hubble Space Telescope.

Since the dawn of spaceflight, only a few hundred people have experienced space firsthand. But since the beginning, there have been moments that captured the world’s imagination and challenged our collective Earth-bound perspective. Of the many orbital endeavors that have made headlines through the decades, one of the most enduring and prolific has been the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Hubble has been called one of the most important single scientific instruments of all time. The data it collected has deepened our understanding of the natural world—from the edge of our solar system to the age of the universe—and the images it has returned have brought the startling beauty of the cosmos to people around the world.

Today, on the 34th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Discovery’s maiden voyage, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and Google Arts & Culture have teamed up to bring visitors into the orbiter like never before. Two of the astronauts who helped deliver Hubble to orbit as part of STS-31—Maj Gen Charlie Bolden  and Dr. Kathy Sullivan—take us on a 360 journey inside Discovery at the Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.

The video was captured using Google’s Halo camera, and takes us along with the astronauts as they climb aboard the spacecraft together for the first time in 28 years. Charlie and Kathy show us what life in space was like from dawn (they saw 16 sunrises and sunsets each day) to dinnertime (sometimes eaten on the ceiling), and relive the moment they deployed Hubble after years of planning and training.

STS-31 is just one great example of why Discovery was called the champion of the Shuttle fleet—and why it is now on display as part of the Smithsonian’s national collection. Discovery flew every kind of mission the Space Shuttle was designed to fly, from Hubble’s deployment to the delivery and assembly of International Space Station modules and more. Today, we’re celebrating the orbiter’s 39 missions and 365 total days in space with this special immersive film, 15 digital exhibits, virtual tours, and over 200 online artifacts.

As we enter a new era of spaceflight in the years ahead—with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and the development of Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope—I hope this new collection demonstrates the remarkable progress we’ve made toward unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and how much farther we can go together. Explore the magic of Discovery Space Shuttle on Google Arts & Culture. 

In 1934 the trumpeter, singer and movie star Louis Armstrong visited a studio in Paris to record his song “Tiger Rag” on a phonograph record that people could play on home gramophones. And while later recordings of “Tiger Rag” made it a celebrated jazz standard, the original recording that captured Armstrong’s passionate and original interpretation faded from memory.

To mark the birthday of Louis Armstrong 117 years ago, Google Arts & Culture and the record label Deutsche Grammophon teamed up to restore and digitize phonograph records like “Tiger Rag” from the label’s archive, and to tell the story of Emile Berliner, who invented the grammophon player and records that brought the music of Armstrong and many other artists to the masses.

In the summer of 1888, thirteen years before Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans, Emile Berliner travelled to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia to unveil his gramophone player and record. Together, they represented the first iteration of the record player as we know it today, and a technology that would outlast every other audio format until the invention of digital formats. For the first time, music lovers everywhere could purchase their favorite songs and enjoy them at home. Later on, Berliner would also launch Deutsche Grammophon, the world’s first record label, as an attempt to commercialise his groundbreaking invention.

Deutsche Grammophon is home to one of the world’s oldest sound archives and still releases music today. Although much of the early archive has been lost due to war and natural decay, there are still thousands of recordings—from jazz and classical, to opera and even spoken poetry awaiting to be listened to again.

With Google Arts & Culture, Deutsche Grammophon is restoring and digitizing hundreds of these previously unpublished cultural treasures. Some of them will be played for the first time in decades; all of them will be made available to the public in high-quality.

In addition to these recordings, Google Arts & Culture launched 12 online exhibitions curated by Deutsche Grammophon with background material on Emile Berliner and the label’s heritage. All of the above is accessible via the Google Arts & Culture website at g.co/deutschegrammophon, as well as the Android and iOS mobile apps.

Join us in celebrating Louis Armstrong’s birthday and Emile Berliner’s inventions by listening to the original recording of “Tiger Rag” here.

For the last century, the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing has been the preeminent school of art education in China. Some of the most renowned masters of Chinese modern art trained at this hallowed institution and many of their works are stored in the CAFA Art Museum.

For CAFA’s 100th anniversary, Google Arts & Culture is taking the masterpieces in its museum to the world, for a new generation of art aficionados to enjoy. These include some iconic and rarely-exhibited works by the father of Chinese modern art Xu Beihong, like Tian Heng and His Five Hundred Followers and Behind Me.

Xu, was the first President of CAFA. Although he lacked a formal art education, his talent was evident from an early age and he received financial assistance to study painting in Japan and Europe. Xu was obsessively dedicated to reviving Chinese art, which he thought had gone to seed because of its over-reliance on traditional Chinese methods of painting. He often spent more than 12 hours a day painting, integrating the best of Western and Chinese techniques. Xu’s works exemplify the realism that became a defining characteristic of Chinese modern art, and you can see over 100 of these pieces on Google Arts & Culture today.

Visit and explore the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum on Google Arts & Culture today, available on desktop, iOS and Android.

When Ben Kacyra watched on TV as the Taliban destroyed 1,500 year-old Buddhist statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan in 2001, he felt compelled to do something. Mr. Kacyra, who happens to be one of the creators of the world's first three-dimensional laser scanning system, realized that his technology could be used to record monuments at risk of damage due to natural disasters, war, or tourism, so that they could be preserved for future generations.

He founded CyArk, a non-profit that has created the world’s largest and most detailed 3D digital archive of endangered wonders of the world—a lasting record of monuments at risk of disappearing. Now, Google Arts & Culture has partnered with CyArk to open up access to their virtual wonders and share their stories with everyone.

With modern technology, we can capture these monuments in fuller detail than ever before, including the color and texture of surfaces and the geometry captured by laser scanners with millimeter precision in 3D. These detailed scans can also be used to identify areas of damage and assist restoration efforts.

The image above shows a structure in Bagan, Myanmar, where a 2016 earthquake damaged many of the city’s famous temples. Before disaster struck however, CyArk’s team had scanned and photographed the site—inside and outside, from the ground and from above. Using the data they collected, we reconstructed Bagan’s key monuments in 3D so you can now travel through this breathtaking place and even step inside the temples using a computer, smartphone or virtual reality viewer like Daydream.

As part of this new online exhibition you can explore stories from over 25 iconic locations across 18 countries around the world, including the Al Azem Palace in war-torn Damascus, Syria and the ancient Mayan metropolis of Chichen Itza in Mexico. For many of the sites, we also developed intricate 3D models that allow you to inspect from every angle, using the new Google Poly 3D viewer on Google Arts & Culture.

Scroll through some of the iconic locations:

Over the past seven years, we’ve partnered with 1,500 museums in over 70 countries to bring their collections online and put more of the world’s culture at your fingertips. This project marks a new chapter for Google Arts & Culture, as it’s the first time we’re putting 3D heritage sites on the platform.

To help the work of restorers, researchers, educators and the entire community working to preserve our cultural heritage, we’re opening up access to the source data collected by CyArk from around the world. Now anyone can apply to download the data, with the help of the Google Cloud Platform.

You don’t need to be an archaeologist to uncover fascinating details in this collection! Discover Google Arts & Culture’s "Open Heritage” project online—or download our free app for iOS or Android.

Art lovers and historians know that sometimes to comprehend the magnitude of an artwork, you need to see the world through the eyes of the artist and understand what inspired them. This is especially true of an artist as talented and beloved as Claude Monet, whose work many of us know but may not have considered in depth. To reveal these insights, the National Gallery London is opening a new exhibition entitled The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Monet and Architecture. This new show will open up a new window into Claude Monet’s world through the cities and buildings that brought his masterpieces to life.

And to mark the opening of the physical exhibition in London, you can now explore a selection of these works from the National Gallery, and see a stirring retrospective of Monet’s paintings from 17 more museums around the world, online on Google Arts & Culture.

Written by curators from the National Gallery, the online exhibition will feature new original stories about Monet, with little-known details of his travels through London, Paris, Rouen and Venice. For example, records show that Monet loved beautiful cities, appreciated architecture, and had a surprisingly great affinity for fog. This can be seen in much of his work, such as where he depicted the view of the Charing Cross Bridge from his suite in the Savoy Hotel in London.

You can also immerse yourself in new, ultra high-resolution imagery of many of Monet’s masterpieces, such as The Water Lily Pondand The Thames Below Westminster. This perspective lets you zoom up close to the works and view every subtle brushstroke, then step back in the digital space to see how these bursts of color create a complete view of the cityscapes that inspired him.

And with Google Earth’s Voyager, both in-person patrons of the National Gallery and virtual visitors to the site can journey across Europe, following in Monet’s footsteps via his paintings. You can also see where his works are at present day—possible destinations for your next in-person or online art journey.

Start your travels with Monet and check out more The National Gallery collections online with Google Arts & Culture and on our iOS and Android apps.