President John F. Kennedy gave inspiration and hope to the American people in his speech to Congress on May 25, 1961 in which he stated, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."
At 9:32 a.m. on July 16, 1969, the Saturn V rocket launched Apollo 11 into the sky from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
three-day journey to the moon, called the translunar coast.
placed the United States ahead of the Soviets in the Space Race and gave people around the world the hope of future space exploration.
At 4:18 p.m. EDT on July 20, 1969, the landing module landed on the moon's surface in the Sea of Tranquility with only seconds of fuel left.
Armstrong reported to the command center in Houston, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Houston responded, "Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again."
six-and-a-half hours resting and then preparing themselves for their moon walk.
Neil Armstrong was the first person out of the lunar module.
set foot on the moon at 10:56 p.m. EDT.
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
Born on Feb. 13, 1923, and raised in the hills of West Virginia near the town of Myra, Charles “Chuck” Yeager entered military service as soon as he could, joining 17 classmates who enlisted after high school graduation to fight in World War II.
Breaking the Sound Barrier
Assigned to a host of test flights, Yeager was soon selected as pilot during the Air Force’s attempt to break the sound barrier; he would fly a super-sonic plane called the X-1, nicknamed Glamorous Glennis in honor of his wife. Rocket-like and so tight and compact that it had to be dropped from a cargo plane to conserve fuel, the X-1 was the United States’s chance to top Mach 1.
Pushing the plane to Mach 1.05, Yeager witnessed the sky turn a “deep purple and all at once the stars and the moon came out—the sun shone at the same time. … He was simply looking out into space,” according to Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff,” chronicling America’s race for space exploration.
Recognized within the Air Force for his achievements, it was not until Tom Wolfe’s book was published in 1979, and the movie version was released in 1983, that Yeager’s name became internationally known.
Hubble is one of NASA's most successful and long-lasting
science missions.
Its position above the
atmosphere, which distorts and blocks the light that reaches
our planet, gives it a view of the universe that typically
far surpasses that of ground-based telescopes.
Hubble's discoveries have transformed the way scientists look
at the universe.
Among its many discoveries, Hubble has revealed the age of
the universe to be about 13 to 14 billion years
Hubble has shown scientists galaxies in all stages of
evolution, including toddler galaxies that were around when
the universe was still young, helping them understand how
galaxies form. It found protoplanetary disks, clumps of gas
and dust around young stars that likely function as birthing
grounds for new planets. It discovered that gamma-ray bursts
— strange, incredibly powerful explosions of energy —
occur in far-distant galaxies when massive stars collapse.
And these are only a handful of its many contributions to
astronomy.
More than 10,000 scientific articles have been
published based on Hubble data.
Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard is considered the father of modern rocket propulsion. A physicist of great insight, Goddard also had a unique genius for invention. It is in memory of this brilliant scientist that NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., was established on May 1, 1959.
By 1926, Goddard had constructed and successfully tested the first rocket using liquid fuel