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Photo: @NASA
(Caracas, July 30. News 24) 60 years ago, stimulated by competition with the Soviet Union, the United States created NASA, starting point of a space adventure that would lead them to the Moon.
Today, the agency is struggling to reinvent itself in an area where more and more international space companies and commercial interests are joining together.
Since its birth, NASA has defied the limits of space exploration but has also experienced resounding failures, as the explosion of two ferries in 1986 and 2003, with a balance of 14 deaths. [19659004SentencingtoturnindeepspacetofaceafundingchallengethatwouldpreventhimfromreturningtotheworldinthenextdecadeandtoMarchintheyears2030
NASA became dependent on the private sector and ] has contracts with SpaceX and Boeing to send astronauts into space from 2019, [19459011assoonastheirinhabitedshipsareready
And it is that the agency can not send astronauts alone in space since 2011, when they closed their space shuttle program after 30 years.
He now owes $ 80 million per seat to Russia to send Americans to the International Space Station (ISS) in a Soyuz capsule.
– The Beginnings –
In 1957, the Soviet Union sends its first satellite in space with Sputnik 1, while the US attempts, mainly under the auspices of the army, fail miserably.
The then president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, then asked Congress to create a separate civil space agency. On July 29, 1958, signed the Law Establishing the NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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. This is how the Apollo program was born .
In 1962, the astronaut John Glenn became the first American to place himself in the Earth's 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.
"This Kennedy decided to use the space program as a declared instrument of geopolitical competition, which made NASA a national political instrument, with a very large budget allocation", he told AFP. .
During the era of Apollo, 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 had other moments of glory in the 1980s, such as the birth of the space shuttle program, and then in 1998, with the beginning ISS operations.
But what is happening today? The president Donald Trump defended the return to the moon, mentioning a lunar bridge that allows a continuous flow of spaceships and people who visit 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.
NASA has long been considered as a leader in space innovation, but faces serious competition today. "You have something like 70 countries that one way or another are involved in the space business," says Logsdon.
Instead of competing with international space agencies, "the emphasis has been on cooperation" to reduce costs and promote innovation, says Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator of the National Museum of Air and Space.
NASA's highest authority, Jim Bridenstine, reiterated last week that he wanted to work with other countries with interests in space. He mentioned the possibility of strengthening cooperation with China and said that he had recently traveled to Israel to meet groups working on a lunar lander.
His predecessor, Charles Bolden, warned of the risks of recurrence of the errors of the time of the ferries, when the United States terminated its program without another spacecraft be ready to take over.
"We can not tolerate another void like this," Bolden said.
With the goal of a manned mission on the moon in just five years, NASA plans to spend about $ 10 billion in lunar exploration with a budget of nearly 20 billion by 2019.
With AFP information
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