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Sixty years ago, stimulated by competition with the Soviet Union, the United States created NASA, the starting point for a space adventure that would take them to the moon.
Today, the agency is struggling to reinvent itself in which more and more international space companies and commercial interests are mixed.
Since its birth, NASA has challenged the limits of space exploration but has also experienced resounding failures, such as the explosion of two ferries in 1986 and 2003, with a death toll of 14 [19659004] NASA ” width=”1000″ height=”750″ srcset=”https://elsiglo.com.ve/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/8nasagrande_crop1532831606252.jpg_1902800913.jpg 1000w, https://elsiglo.com.ve/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/8nasagrande_crop1532831606252.jpg_1902800913-300×225.jpg 300w, https://elsiglo.com.ve/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/8nasagrande_crop1532831606252.jpg_1902800913-768×576.jpg 768w, https://elsiglo.com.ve/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/8nasagrande_crop1532831606252.jpg_1902800913-80×60.jpg 80w, https://elsiglo.com.ve/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/8nasagrande_crop1532831606252.jpg_1902800913-265×198.jpg 265w, https://elsiglo.com.ve/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/8nasagrande_crop1532831606252.jpg_1902800913-696×522.jpg 696w, https://elsiglo.com.ve/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/8nasagrande_crop1532831606252.jpg_1902800913-560×420.jpg 560w” sizes=”(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px”/> [19659002Strengtheningthespaceinthedeepspacefacingafundingchallengethatwouldpreventhimfromreturningtothemooninthenextdecadeandovertheyears2030
NASA became dependent on the private sector and has contracts with SpaceX and Boeing to send astronauts into space from 2019 onwards. as soon as their inhabited ships are ready.
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. The agency can not send astronauts alone into space since 2011, when it closed its space shuttle program after 30 years.
He now has to pay $ 80 million per seat to Russia to send Americans to the International Space Station (ISS) in a Soyuz capsule.
– The beginnings of NASA –
In 1957, the Soviet Union sends its first satellite in space with Sputnik 1 while American attempts, mainly under the auspices of the army, fail miserably.
President for the time, Dwight D Eisenhower then asked Congress to create a separate civil space agency. On July 29, 1958, he signed the law that creates the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA.
The Soviets won another round in April 1961, when Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. A month later, the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, announced his intention to send a man to the moon in the late 1960s. Thus was born the Apollo program.
HISTORY OF SPACE
In 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to place himself on the planet. Earth orbit. And in 1969, Neil Armstrong goes into history as the first man to walk on the moon.
"Apollo was a unilateral demonstration of the power of a nation," recalls John Logsdon, professor emeritus of the Space Policy Institute of George Washington University.
"That Kennedy decided to use the space program as a declared instrument of geopolitical competence, that is what made NASA an instrument of national policy, with a very important budgetary allocation," he told AFP. Apollo era, no less than 5% of the national budget went to NASA. Today, this proportion has exceeded less than 0.5% of the federal budget (about 18,000 million dollars a year), and NASA no longer has the same weight in national politics, according to Logsdon.
– New era –
NASA has experienced other moments of glory in the 1980s, as the birth of the space ferry program, and then in 1998, with the start of operations of the ISS.
But what's going on today? President Donald Trump defended the return to the moon, mentioning a lunar bridge that allows a continuous flow of spaceships and people visiting the satellite, and which would serve as a starting point for a possible trip to Mars.
He also called for the creation of a space force, a sixth branch of the armed forces that would be geared to defend the interests of the United States.
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