NASA History

By Bethany Grimm

DID YOU KNOW?. . .

• Space is only about 90 miles away. That means if you’re in Dallas, you’re about the same distance from space as you are to the Oklahoma border. What makes getting there so difficult is that you can’t simply get in your car and drive up.

• People solved this problem by observing that when a bomb explodes, different fragments shoot in different directions really, really fast. Rockets work by similar mechanics, except the target direction is up.

• And the reason people are in space is because of politics. (Okay, in part.) The Space Race, between the USA and Russia during the Cold War, consisted of both parties trying to do cool things off the planet. (“Cool things” ranged from putting dogs in space to actually getting people to walk on the moon.)

• And people did walk on the moon, during the Apollo 11 mission, but there were a whole bunch of preceding missions; notably Mercury and Gemini and a few other Apollo missions. The main thing to know about them is that 1) they all happened in preparation to go to the moon and 2) the spacecraft/suits began to resemble sardine cans less and less.

• To date, only twelve people have set foot on the moon, all from NASA. Yeah, just twelve. (Russia had plans to do the same, but technical difficulties prevented them from following suit. It along with several other countries, though, have put probes, but not people, on the moon.)

• Prior to that, the USA once considered nuking the moon.

• They didn’t.

• If you ever think about going down an internet rabbit hole of “nuking the moon,” please do. It’s quite fascinating. Back to things that actually happened.

• What’s NASA been doing between then and now? To summarize: space shuttles, space stations, telescopes, and probes to Mars and beyond. Each came with its share of triumphs and failures, with the underlying point being that space is really difficult and dangerous but also really worth it.

• What about NASA’s future? NASA’s getting ready to go to Mars, but it’s a long way out. A shorter-term objective? Put people back on the moon by 2024. The first of these Artemis missions is scheduled to happen in November of 2022 – pretty exciting times for humanity!