65 years of NASA – an astrophysicist reflects on the agency's legacy

• Sixty-five years ago, in 1958, several government programs that had been pursuing spaceflight combined to form NASA.
• From John Glenn’s first flight into orbit to the Hubble telescope, the agency’s legacy has inspired generations of scientists.

First flight into orbit

• My first grade teacher, Ms. Ochs, told the class that we would be doing something different on that day.
• When the rocket got high enough, Glenn in the Mercury capsule – the cap – would separate from the rocket and go into orbit around the Earth.
• My class then sat and listened to the historic launch of Friendship 7 carrying Glenn, which was the first U.S. mission to send a man into orbit around the Earth.
• The program proved that NASA could put a manned spacecraft in orbit and bring it back safely to Earth.

A two-person spacecraft

• In 1965, NASA planned to launch the two-person Gemini spacecraft, and I moved on to the fifth grade where my teacher, Mrs. Wein, was also a space enthusiast.
• This was the first time that two piloted spacecraft performed what is called a rendezvous maneuver, where they meet up in orbit.
• Orbital maneuvers like this require very precise calculations and a spacecraft in which astronauts can make path changes in orbit – which is what the Gemini capsule was designed to do.

On to the Moon

• The Apollo 11 Moon landing happened in July 1969.
• In December 1972, when I was a senior in high school, Gene Cernan became the last person to walk on the Moon during the Apollo 17 mission.
• Like many of us who witnessed the Apollo missions, I listened to Cernan’s final words from the Moon, where he challenged young people to continue what NASA had begun.

After Apollo

• For one, the ability to guide unmanned robotic spacecraft anywhere in the solar system was a byproduct of the technologies necessary for the manned Apollo missions.
• Perhaps the most ambitious of these is the Mars Perseverance Rover, which looks for chemical evidence of past or present life on Mars.
• The Hubble Space Telescope and its newly launched cousin, the James Webb Space Telescope, have allowed astronomers to get large telescopes above Earth’s optically hazy atmosphere.

Looking ahead

• I hope that today there are elementary teachers like Ms. Ochs and Mrs. Wein who will nurture the wonder and excitement of spaceflight in their students.
• They can watch livestreams, like those of launches of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy in 2018 and NASA’s Artemis I in November 2022.
• When the students I teach today near my age, I wonder what amazing things – about which we can only dream – they will look back on.