Here's The Story
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite to orbit earth. Its launch was a surprise to the competitive American spirit that responded with some anxiety evident in some newspaper headlines: “Reds Orbit Artificial Moon” and “Soviets’ Satellite Circles Globe Every 90 Minutes”. Gee, “Reds” sounds almost like a rival sports team! Just a few weeks later Sputnik 2 carried the first passenger—a dog named Laika. Humorists dubbed this flight “Muttnick”. Interestingly enough, Sputnik 5 later carried 2 dogs, 40 mice, 2 rats and a variety of plants on board. In 1961, President Kennedy challenged the Russians in a race to the moon. Sounds like the Astronauts vs. the Cosmonauts! But in 1969 the U.S. got there first—alive; so Russia re-focused efforts with a permanent space station. NASA has since carried out numerous missions with shuttles and satellites.
During the Cold War was when the history of space travel started to be preserved. The story of German rocket development told by historians was tempered with a cleaned-up chronology of scientific events of Nazi rocketry activities. This was to make it palatable to Western audiences during the Cold War. They likely romanticized the engineering development as aimed at space travel, rather than just weapons development for Hitler. Also, years ago hundreds of German and Austrian specialists were headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, turning this formerly small, southern town into Rocket City, USA. Maybe this was the impetus for our own country to gear up for space exploration!
NASA began its first astronaut selection in 1959 where they enlisted the help of the military, asking them to proffer up qualified personnel. Selected were seven men, all pilots, as America’s first astronauts. Now, NASA gets astronauts from a pool of applicants in a wide variety of backgrounds. They have mission specialists that come with backgrounds in microbiology, medical science, geology, physics and electrical engineering. I won’t go into the celestial cartography of space here; but did you know this little factoid? There is no accepted international definition of where airspace ends and space begins. The U.S. decided it was in their best interest to say that whatever orbits earth is not passing through territorial space. I think it is akin to international waters in the oceans.
Decades Past & Present
I suppose many of us remember the tragic moment when the Space Shuttle Challenger was lost with all its crew on launch in 1986. But there are a lot of successes that have occurred adding to our knowledge base as well as birthing technology that affects our lives here on earth. In 1977 Voyager I and II started out their voyages that continue to this day. They have both been renamed to the Voyager Interstellar Mission. Judging from the new name here, something tells me we are getting pretty advanced—interstellar means between stars. Both spacecraft now way beyond the planet Pluto gathering data about the outer reaches of our sun’s sphere of influence. It will take another 10-20 years before the Voyager mission enters true interstellar space. The last pictures snapped were when Voyager looked back 3.7 billion miles to get seven of our planets in one snapshot where the earth appeared as a pale blue dot.
Another exciting NASA mission is the journey of Galileo passing by Jupiter. It launched in 2005 and had its share of drama, as did the ocean voyages in the original Age of Discovery—minus the natives, plus the hi-tech tools. Traveling through an asteroid belt capturing spectacular images enabled science to learn much about Jupiter and the geologic diversity of its four largest moons. There is more going on out there currently with the Cassini mission studying Saturn. A probe called Deep Impact (purposely) slammed into comet Tempel 1 to gather data that is still in the process of being completed. Two more powerful new Mars rovers are now on the surface of the red planet. They have more mobility than the ’97 Pathfinder rover. Messenger is the name of the spacecraft that is now about 2/5ths of the way to its destination orbit of Mercury. An extraordinarily difficult mission is going to be attempted that must deal with the sun’s gravitational pull. The New Horizons mission has been launched to make the first reconnaissance of Pluto and Charon at the far edge of the solar system. Rosetta is a European Space Agency mission set to rendezvous with a comet in 2014. It was launched back in 2004. In just a few days the Dawn mission launches to orbit two of the largest asteroids in our solar system.
We’ve now observed from ground observatories over one hundred planets and planetary systems around other stars. But large telescopes originate from the age before rocket and satellite launches. Now we can launch a satellite on a rocket—like Chandra that had a launch date in 1999—and let it orbit high above the earth. This satellite is a sophisticated x-ray observatory to examine high energy regions of the universe. The images it has taken are worth viewing for their unique beauty. NASA has another orbiting space telescope to study galaxies and how they evolve. It’s named the Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The Hubble telescope was one of their most successful missions. There were hundreds of thousands of images beamed back—very Star Trek huh—to help us determine the age of the universe, the identity of quasars and the existence of dark energy. Get your Free issue of the catalog devoted to devotees of astronomy. It's titled Spaceshots--Images and Imagination. It even has star atlases and observing guides!
It's Far From Over
My memorable encounter with the final frontier was in the early ‘70’s when, as a child, I got to see a moonrock up close. Astronauts had brought back an egg-size, grey piece of our moon. Enclosed in a glass case and well guarded; it made it's mark on my memory. “…We find the unexpected, and that’s what makes it exciting.”; was said by Len Fisk, the former head of space science at NASA describing why we enjoy this adventure. In that vein, consider the reclassification of Pluto recently—even that planet can have identity issues. Also, the curious case of Chiron discovered in 1979. They’ve now labeled it a Centaur object. Glimpse into the future…the James Webb Space Telescope is now being designed to orbit in 2011. With 10X the light gathering power of Hubble it will delve deeper than ever before to an era when galaxies first formed. For your own viewing pleasure you can purchase a telescope from a noteworthy store, Edmund Scientifics!
That sums up 50 years of missions in space. 50 years from now I’ll muse again on this subject…but I’ll be writing it from my moonbase and beaming it back to our home planet. Wink!
Books Abound
Amazon has quite a number of books for those who are starry-eyed!!
 | Too Far From Home: A Story of Life and Death in Space (Book)
An incredible, true-life adventure set on the most dangerous frontier of all—outer spaceIn the nearly forty years since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, space travel has c...more
Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 (See the reviews)
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 | Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (Book)
''FASCINATING . . . MEMORABLE . . . REVEALING . . . PERHAPS THE BEST OF CARL SAGAN'S BOOKS.''--The Washington Post Book World (front page review)In Cosmos, the late astronomer Car...more
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (See the reviews)
List Price: $35.00
Lowest Used Price: $0.56 (as of 9/8/2008@1:22 AM)
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