History of the Space Program
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Since the beginning of time, man has stared up at the sky and longed to reach the heavens. The earliest societies used the stars and the planets as the basis for religion, science and much more. Although man has had the desire to explore the heavens for millenia, it is only within the last century that the technology to allow for this journey became available.
Professor Robert H. Goddard ushered in the rocket age in 1914, patenting the first liquid fueled rocket. 12 years later, Professor Goddard would launch his first successful liquid fueled rocket, marking the beginning of man's journey into space. The launch also marked the dawn of rockets as weapons. The Nazi's used rockets to bombard London during World War II and made many attempts to use rockets in the creation of the atomic bomb.
Professor Goddard passed away on July 10, 1945. The next year, the United States launched the first rocket built specifically to leave the Earth's atmosphere, reaching a height of 50 miles, to be followed in 1949 with the launch of the V-2 WAC-Corporal, the first rocket to reach outer space. However, the "Space Race" would not officially begin until 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik into orbit.
Sputnik was launched into orbit on October 4, 1957, on the back of a converted inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM). The satellite orbited the Earth every 96 minutes and stayed in space until 1958. The United States would launch their first satellite only months later on January 31, 1958. The satellite, dubbed "Explorer", was launched on by a Jupiter-C rocket and would discover the existence of the Van Allen Belts, which had been theorized by Professor James Van Allen of the University of Iowa. In 1959 the United States selected seven men to be the first "astronauts", the group consisted of Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton, one of whom was intended to be the first man in space. Unfortunately for the United States, the Soviet Union beat them to the punch on this front as well, launching "Cosmonaut" Yuri Gagarin a full month before Alan Shepard became the first American in space.
In 1962 John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. Glenn, a decorated World War II pilot, was forced to take manual control of the ship when its automatic altitude control system began to fail, guiding Friendship 7 safely back to the Earth. In 1965 the Soviet Union again managed to one-up the United States when cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov left his capsule and took the first "spacewalk."
In 1969, the United States would finally accomplish the mission that President John F. Kennedy had put forth in 1961. On July 20, Neil Armstrong opened the hatch on the lunar-lander "Eagle" and took what he immortally described as "one giant step for man, one giant leap for mankind" onto the surface of the moon.
Over the next three decades the United States would take significant steps forward in the exploration of space; unfortunately, these achievements would not be accomplished without accompanying tragedies. In 1986 the Space Shuttle Challenger, carrying a crew that included Christa McAuliffe (who was to be the first teacher in space) exploded 73 seconds after launch, killing all aboard. This tragedy would be repeated in 2003 when the Space Shuttle Columbia (which had been in service for 22 years) broke apart during re-entry and killed its seven person crew.
Despite these tragedies the space program has made significant discoveries, such as the possibility of life on Mars and the existence of water on the moon. While there will undoubtedly be future setbacks, the United States has set a clear agenda for the space program moving forward, and the discoveries that await will certainly help scientists in their quest to explain the origins of our planet and unlock the mysteries of the universe.