National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Space exploration was just one of the areas in which the world superpowers (the United States and the former Soviet Union) competed. Neither wanted to be left behind, or considered second best. So intense was this competition between 1957 and 1975 that it was dubbed the Space Race .

In October 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. The United States was immediately concerned that the Soviet Union was more technologically advanced. With the hopes of catching up, Congress established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on July 29, 1958. The purpose of NASA was to coordinate and conduct aeronautical and space research. It opened with four laboratories and approximately eighty governmental employees.

Rises to the challenge

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963; served 1961–63) challenged the United States to travel to the moon before 1970, and NASA took that challenge seriously. The result was Project Mercury, the first manned space program. On April 9, 1959, NASA introduced the seven men who would be the program's first astronauts. From that point on, astronauts and space exploration became a national obsession. Children wore space helmets and played with pretend ray guns. Families took vacations to Cape Canaveral in Florida , where NASA rockets blasted off, to tour the facility and learn about space flight. Science fiction books and television shows became even more popular as Americans vividly imagined what space travel would be like.

Within five years, NASA sent six manned space flights into orbit. Alan B. Shepard Jr. (1923–1998) was the first American in space when he piloted the Freedom 7 in May 1961. John Glenn (1921–) was the first American to orbit the Earth almost one year later as he flew the Friendship 7 for more than five hours in February 1962. More than two million people from within government agencies and the aerospace industry combined their skills and talents to make these manned flights happen. The United States had definitely joined the race.

To the moon

In 1965, Virgil (Gus) Grissom (1926–1967) and John Young (1930–) flew the first of nine missions that comprised Project Gemini. These missions collected data on the effects of weightlessness on humans and proved that orbiting and docking two spacecraft together in space were possible.

The next step was to put a man on the moon. This was the mission of Project Apollo, which would include both manned and unmanned missions and last from 1961 to 1975. The program received a setback in 1967 when three astronauts were killed on the Apollo I when their shuttle caught fire on the launchpad. NASA knew there would be failures and accidents; that was part of space exploration. The years 1969 to 1972 were the high points of the program—when U.S. astronauts landed on the moon.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong (1930–) became the first human to land on the moon. As commander of the Apollo 11 spacecraft, Armstrong said as he took his first step, “That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” His mission also included astronauts Buzz Aldrin (1930–) and Michael Collins (1930–).

NASA did not rest on its success with the Apollo 11 mission. In 1973, it launched into orbit Skylab, the first space station. The station included a laboratory for studying various space-related phenomenon.

Space shuttle ups and downs

The focus for the remainder of the decade was on the space shuttle. By 1985, four space shuttles had been built. The plan was for these vehicles to be easily launched and reusable. The first shuttle, Columbia, launched in April 1981. This launch rekindled the American public's interest in space flight. After the excitement of the Apollo missions, the moon landings lost their novelty on the public. People even complained that their soap operas were being interrupted by space missions.

Five years after the first launch of the space shuttle, Americans across the nation watched in horror as the Challenger shuttle exploded in midair, just seconds after takeoff. This particular mission was a major milestone in space flight history, as the seven-member crew included Christa McAuliffe (1948–1986), an elementary school teacher. She had been selected from more than eleven thousand applicants to be the first school teacher in space. The entire crew was killed in the Challenger space shuttle explosion on January 28, 1986, an event that gave the American public cause to question the safety of space travel and research. It was another two years before NASA resumed its shuttle launches.

Modern day NASA

NASA has not slowed down in its quest to explore space in the twenty-first century. Although the American public has expressed mixed feelings about the usefulness of NASA in modern society, the organization continues to demonstrate its value as it moves ahead with its study of space, which includes the Mars Exploration Program.