A 60-year-old NASA fires for the revival of days of lunar glory »Manila Newsletter News

By Agence France-Presse

Sixty years ago, stimulated by competition with the Soviet Union, the United States NASA, launching a Since then, the US Space Agency has enjoyed glorious successes and overwhelming failures in its efforts to push back the frontiers of space exploration, including a deadly deadly fire in 1967 that killed three and two fatal shuttle explosions in 1986 and 2003 that claimed the lives of 14 people.

NASA It is hard to redefine itself in an increasingly crowded field of international space agencies and commercial interests, with its views on the return to deep space.

These bold goals make rhetoric, but experts worry that the money is not there to meet the deadlines of reaching the moon in the next decade and March by the 2030s

And the inability of NASA to send astronauts into space – a capacity lost in 2011 when the space shuttle program has ended, as expected, after 30 years – is a lasting stain on the agency While US private industries are working hard on new spaceships, NASA still has to pay Russia $ 80 million per seat for US astronauts to go up in space on a capsule of Soyuz

How it began

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite in space with Sputnik 1, while American attempts failed miserably

The Government American was already working to reach the space, but mainly under the guise of the army. ] President Dwight D. Eisenhower asked Congress to create a separate civil space agency to better focus on space exploration

He signed the law on the national aeronautics and aeronautics space on July 29, 1958.

Its doors in October 1958, with about 8,000 employees and a budget of $ 100 million.

Race to Space

The Soviets won another key part of the space race in 1961 when Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbi a month later John F. Kennedy unveiled plans to land a man on the moon at the end of the decade

"No single space project in this period will be more impressive for humanity, or more importantly for" The Apollo program was born. "

In 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit space in the Earth.In 1969, NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong was became the first man to walk on the moon

American astronauts of the time were national heroes – military pilots with a combination of brains, courage and grime known as "The Right Stuff" ., "The title of the classic book Tom Wolfe.

The words of Armstrong while he was stepping on the lunar surface – "a small step for the man, a step from giant for humanity "- have been heard by millions of people around the world. John Logsdon, Professor Emeritus at the George Washington University Space Policy Institute

"Kennedy has decided to use the space program as a manifest geopolitical competition instrument that has made NASA NASA's budget reached $ 18 billion a year, less than half of NASA's budget at the time of Apollo

. "And this is no longer the same instrument of national politics," says Logsdon

New era

More days of glory followed in the 1980s with the birth of the shuttle program NASA: Reusable spacecraft that transported astronauts into space and finally to the international space station, which began operating in 1998.

But what is NASA today?

The President Donald Trump preco nized a return to the moon. gateway that would allow a continuous spacecraft and people to visit the moon, and would serve as a starting point for Mars.

Trump also called for the creation of a "Space Force," a sixth branch of the military that would focus on defending US interests.

NASA has long been considered a world leader in space innovation, but today the international field is much more populated than it was 60 years ago.

"Now you have something like 70 countries that are one way or another involved in space activity," says Logsdon. According to Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator at the National Museum of Air and Space, "the enhancement of cooperation with international space agencies has reduced costs and accelerated Innovation. "

"

The director of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, said at a recent roundtable that he wanted to work with from other countries that are striving to conquer space.

He mentioned the possibility of strengthening cooperation with China. Bridenstine stated that the reason for his visit was "how are you doing this, what are you doing and is there a way NASA can take it?"

NASA moves away from the low Earth orbit, seeking to hand over the space station to commercial interests after 2024, and spending millions of dollars in seed capital to help private companies like SpaceX and Boeing to manufacture capsules to transport In this environment, Bridenstine said that determining what NASA does, compared to what it buys as a service from commercial vendors, will be "one of the fundamental challenges I will have to do. in the course of my tenure. "

Bridenstine said Trump's budget demands for NASA were "very generous."

With his eyes on a crew mission on the moon in five years, NASA plans to dedicate Bridenstine's predecessor to the helm of NASA, retired astronaut Charles Bolden, issued a warning against the repeated mistakes of the era of the shuttle, when the United States put an end to its human activities. "We can not tolerate another ditch like this," Bolden said.

"It is really essential for NASA to facilitate the success of commercial entities in taking over Earth's orbit, some 400 miles (400 kilometers) above the planet.

"And then for NASA to do what it does so well, be the leader of the lunar orbit."