So much has happened since Arno’s first visit to an observatory.
Tang, the instant breakfast drink, began to be used by astronauts in 1962 when it was added to the menu for John Glenn, the first American astronaut put into orbit aboard Friendship 7 (the Mercury program). During that and subsequent flights, NASA was able to learn how eating was affected in low gravity. Tang sales certainly improved after astronauts started drinking it. This association created the misconception that Tang was invented for the space program.
After twenty-seven-year-old cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made his historic flight into space aboard Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, the Soviet Union launched the first woman into space on June 16, 1963. Valentina Tereshkova completed forty-eight orbits around Earth during almost three days in space. She was twenty-six years old.
Recognizing that space exploration should be done only for peaceful purposes, the United Nations created a Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. The treaty was signed by the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom on January 27, 1967, the same disastrous day that the Americans lost three astronauts (Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom and Ed White) to a fire in their spacecraft during a launch rehearsal test as part of the Apollo program.
On December 24, 1968, a famous photograph called “Earthrise” was taken during the Apollo 8 mission by Bill Anders, one of the first astronauts to orbit the Moon. The photo is of Earth and parts of the Moon’s surface. It is widely recognized as the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.
The Space Race dramatically ended on July 20, 1969, with the landing of Apollo 11 on the Moon after just over three days of travel from Earth. Michael Collins continued to orbit the Moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the surface in the lunar module called Eagle, then walked about and conducted experiments for around three hours.
Before returning to orbit to join Collins, the two astronauts stuck a US flag on the Moon and also left a plaque that read:
HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON
JULY 1969 A.D.
WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND
On July 24, 1969, all three astronauts came back to Earth safely.
Twelve astronauts in all walked on the Moon from 1969 to 1972. Their footprints remain.
For more than a decade, tensions remained high between the two superpowers. Both sides were also critical of each other’s engineering. The Soviet spacecraft was designed with automation in mind to minimize risk due to human error by having fewer manual controls for cosmonauts to manage. The Americans designed their complicated spacecraft to be operated by highly trained astronauts. Then, in July 1975, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was conducted. This was the first joint US-Soviet space flight. It involved the docking of the Soviet Soyuz 19 spacecraft with an unnumbered Apollo vehicle that was surplus from the terminated Apollo program. It provided useful engineering experience for future joint US-Russian space flights as well as the International Space Station.
In 1976, two NASA probes arrived at Mars. Photographs were taken of the planet, and its rocks were analyzed. However, the search for life was unsuccessful.
In 1981, Columbia, the first of NASA’s reusable space shuttles, took its maiden flight. The shuttle made space travel routine and eventually opened the path for a new International Space Station.
In 1986, the returning Halley’s Comet was met by a fleet of five probes from Russia, Japan and Europe. The most ambitious was the European Space Agency’s Giotto spacecraft, which flew through the comet’s coma and photographed the nucleus.
In 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope, the first large optical telescope in orbit, was launched using the Space Shuttle. Unfortunately, it was crippled by a problem with its mirror. A complex repair mission in 1993 allowed the telescope to start producing spectacular images of distant stars, nebulae and galaxies.
In 2006, the definition of a planet changed. According to new rules adopted by the International Astronomical Union, a celestial body must meet the following three criteria in order to qualify as a planet: a planet must be round, a planet must revolve around the Sun, and a planet must have “cleared the neighborhood” of its orbit. This means that as a planet travels, its gravity sweeps and clears the space around it of other objects. Some of the objects may crash into the planet, others may become moons. Pluto only meets the first two criteria. It has not cleared its neighborhood.
Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet. It joins Ceres (located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter) and Eris as our solar system’s dwarf planets, along with Haumea (discovered in 2004) and Makemake (discovered in 2005). Both are located between Pluto and Eris.
Back in the 1960s, Life magazine resorted to artist drawings of what Pluto might look like because there weren’t any photographs of it yet. The first spacecraft to visit Pluto and take photographs was NASA’s piano-sized New Horizons, launched on January 19, 2006. That craft benefited from a gravity assist from Jupiter and made its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015.
In the early days, the first astronauts had to undergo extreme physical and mental screening to ensure that they would respond effectively and appropriately to stresses associated with space missions. Physical endurance tests included treadmills, tilt tables, keeping one’s feet in ice water and blowing up balloons until exhaustion. There was also lengthy time spent in sensory-deprivation chambers. And, like jet pilots, astronauts had to see all colors. Later, during the Space Shuttle era, NASA created a new astronaut job assignment called Mission Specialist. This attracted people from many different fields, such as doctors and teachers. For these positions, NASA relaxed some physical requirements. For example, astronaut Roger K. Crouch is a payload specialist, an expert who has trained to conduct experiments for single space flights. He is color blind.
With the aid of more powerful devices, additional moons were discovered around Jupiter. Today’s total now stands at well over seventy, making Jupiter the planet with the highest number of moons in our solar system. Astronomers believe that, because of its strong gravitational pull, Jupiter has saved Earth from many impacts from cosmic debris.
As scientists continue to strive to understand our universe, the countdown has just begun. Astronomers use ever more powerful telescopes and other devices to search for objects that might strike Earth. They use them to predict solar flares that could knock out our power grids. They use them to search for exoplanets and perhaps even to discover alien life.
All the while, NASA is once again forecasting crewed missions, only this time the plans are for returning to the Moon to establish a permanent outpost, landing on an asteroid and orbiting Mars, all by 2035.
Perhaps you’ll be on one of these missions!
Or perhaps you’ll make an unimaginable discovery in deep space through even more sophisticated telescopes than we have today.
Clear skies!