What is the significance of nasa

Using pencils in space, which both agencies did before the Fisher Space Pen, worried them because pencil dust could float around the cabin. On a far-off world, one that's an average distance of million miles million kilometers away from our own, there's an SUV-sized, nuclear-powered vehicle with its own Twitter account. Ladies and gentlemen, let's talk about the Curiosity Rover. In , NASA's Mars Pathfinder became the first spacecraft to land on another planet you can guess which one without first orbiting it.

Curiosity sidesteps those problems by using plutonium to generate electricity [source: Belanger ]. For a Martian rover, Curiosity is huge. Weighing 1, pounds kilograms , it's 10 feet 3. That makes the vehicle four times heavier — and twice as long — as two of the rovers that preceded it to Mars, namely the Spirit and the Opportunity.

Oh yeah, and Curiosity totally dwarfs the Pathfinder rover, which had the rough dimensions of a microwave oven [source: Webster ].

The craft's bulk forced NASA to execute a complex landing process involving a breakaway parachute and disposable rockets. On Aug. It's spent the past six years examining the geology and climate of our closest planetary neighbor. Among other things, Curiosity has found compelling evidence to indicate that both liquid water and organic molecules could have once existed on Mars [source: Freeman ].

Plus, the 'bot is an internet celebrity. Curiosity and the other Mars rovers have given us crucial information about the Red Planet. But that shared dream wouldn't exist if it weren't for the next accomplishment on our list.

He wasn't the first human in space; a Soviet astronaut named Yuri Gagarin has that distinction. It was a nervous day for NASA. The countdown, divided into two parts so Shepard and the launch crew could obtain some rest before the moment of truth came, took more than 24 hours. NASA halted it several times for minor equipment checks, and finally it was T minutes to liftoff. Shepard was onboard, the pilots of the launch vehicle were ready, and all systems were go.

Then the clouds moved in. The weather wasn't a problem for the launch. But it was a problem for the photographer covering the biggest NASA event to date. So NASA postponed the launch until the clouds cleared.

As they waited, one of the orbiter's power inverters showed signs of trouble, and engineers fixed the problem in 86 minutes. Then the countdown began again. The rest of the countdown went smoothly and the launch, at a.

Shepard reached Earth orbit at an altitude of He spent 15 minutes and 28 seconds up there, travelling miles kilometers around the Earth at 5, miles per hour 8, kilometers per hour [source: NASA ].

When he splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, he had completed a perfect mission and led the way for every NASA manned mission to come. The mission that solidified NASA's place in history came eight years later. It was so monumental that conspiracy theorists question its validity to this day.

Kennedy announced the mission that would be NASA's greatest achievement: America was going to the moon. It took eight years to realize Kennedy's stated goal.

Apollo 1 in was a disaster: All three astronauts onboard died in a fire on the launch pad. Over the next two years, NASA ran nine more missions, testing various aspects of the operation. But Apollo 11 was the first mission to actually land men on the moon. When astronaut Neil Armstrong set foot on its surface on July 20, , and spoke the words "One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind," an estimated million people from all across the world were eagerly watching [source: NASA].

The landing was such a big event, there are those who believe it couldn't have happened — that the whole thing was staged. Granted, it was an event of Hollywood proportions — it was both scripted and choreographed. But that's because the lunar landing was NASA's moment in the spotlight, a first for the record books and an almost inconceivable achievement in the space age. There were five more Apollo missions to the moon. Only a dozen people have ever set foot on its surface. It's to NASA's enduring credit that every single one of them did so as an astronaut in the Apollo program.

As of this writing, the last person to tread across the lunar surface was the late Gene Cernan of Apollo Before making his way back to Earth, he put the day's significance into words [source: Mettler ]. And as we leave the Moon Godspeed the crew of Apollo Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots.

Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. By , the design depicted a complex, large, and multipurpose facility. In , after much debate over the station's purpose and budget, NASA released plans for a restructured facility called Space Station Freedom. Another redesign took place after the Clinton administration took office in and the facility became known as Space Station Alpha.

Then Russia, which had many years of experience in long-duration human spaceflight, such as with its Salyut and Mir space stations, joined with the U. On January 14, , President George W. This Vision entails sending humans back to the Moon and on to Mars by eventually retiring the Shuttle and developing a new, multipurpose Crew Exploration Vehicle. Robotic scientific exploration and technology development is also folded into this encompassing Vision.

In particular, the s heralded the advent of a new generation of scientific spacecraft. Two similar spacecraft, Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, launched on March 2, and April 5, , respectively, traveled to Jupiter and Saturn to study the composition of interplanetary space. Voyagers 1 and 2, launched on September 5, and August 20, , respectively, conducted a "Grand Tour" of our solar system. In , the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit around the Earth.

Unfortunately, NASA scientists soon discovered that a microscopic spherical aberration in the polishing of the Hubble's mirror significantly limited the instrument's observing power.

During a previously scheduled servicing mission in December, , a team of astronauts performed a dramatic series of spacewalks to install a corrective optics package and other hardware. The hardware functioned like a contact lens and the elegant solution worked perfectly to restore Hubble's capabilities. The servicing mission again demonstrated the unique ability of humans to work in space, enabled Hubble to make a number of important astronomical discoveries, and greatly restored public confidence in NASA.

Several months before this first HST servicing mission, however, NASA suffered another major disappointment when the Mars Observer spacecraft disappeared on August 21, , just three days before it was to go into orbit around the red planet.

Mars Global Surveyor was the first of these spacecraft; it was launched on November 7, , and has been in a Martian orbit mapping Mars since Using some innovative technologies, the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft landed on Mars on July 4, and explored the surface of the planet with its miniature rover, Sojourner.

The Mars Pathfinder mission was a scientific and popular success, with the world following along via the Internet. This success was followed by the landing of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers in January , to much scientific and popular acclaim. Over the years, NASA has continued to look for life beyond our planet. In , NASA launched the two Viking spacecraft to look for basic signs of life on Mars; the spacecraft arrived on Mars in but did not find any indications of past or present biological activity there.

In a probe from the Galileo spacecraft that was examining Jupiter and its moon, Europa, revealed that Europa may contain ice or even liquid water, thought to be a key component in any life-sustaining environment.

NASA also has used radio astronomy to scan the heavens for potential signals from extraterrestrial intelligent life.

It continues to investigate whether any Martian meteorites contain microbiological organisms and in the late s, organized an "Origins" program to search for life using powerful new telescopes and biological techniques. More recently scientists have found more and more evidence that water used to be present on Mars.

In the s, NASA's highly successful X program involved a rocket-powered airplane that flew above the atmosphere and then glided back to Earth unpowered. The X pilots helped researchers gain much useful information about supersonic aeronautics and the program also provided data for development of the Space Shuttle. The Dyna-Soar was a precursor to later similar efforts such as the National Aerospace Plane, on which NASA and other Government agencies and private companies did advanced hypersonics research in such areas as structures, materials, propulsion, and aerodynamics.

NASA has also done significant research on flight maneuverability on high speed aircraft that is often applicable to lower speed airplanes. NASA scientist Richard Whitcomb invented the "supercritical wing" that was specially shaped to delay and lessen the impact of shock waves on transonic military aircraft and had a significant impact on civil aircraft design.

More sophisticated DFBW systems were used on the X and X aircraft, which would have been uncontrollable otherwise. Kennedy declared that America should put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. NASA has continued to make great advances in space exploration since the first moonwalk, including playing a major part in the construction of the International Space Station. The agency has also suffered tragic setbacks, however, such as the disasters that killed the crews of the Challenger space shuttle in and the Columbia space shuttle in But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

Under Hitler, the Nazi Party grew into a mass movement and ruled Germany as a totalitarian state from to By the beginning of , The Doors were well-established members of the Los Angeles music scene. As the house band at the Whiskey a Go Go on the Sunset Strip, they had built a large local following and strong industry buzz, and out on the road, they were fast becoming known as a After eight hours of furious fighting, a change in wind direction prompted the Spanish to break off Nearly one billion television viewers in 74 countries tune in to witness the marriage of Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, to Lady Diana Spencer, a young English schoolteacher.

Married in a grand ceremony at St. In Monza, Italy, King Umberto I is shot to death by Gaetano Bresci, an Italian-born anarchist who resided in America before returning to his homeland to murder the king. He was selected for the manned space program in , at the same time as Swigert. Apollo 13 was Haise's only trip to space. Apollo 13 was Swigert's first trip to space, at age He had been part of the support crew for Apollo 7 and was initially Apollo 13's backup command module pilot.

He was asked to join the crew 48 hours before launch time after the original command module pilot, Ken Mattingly , was exposed to German measles.

Apollo 13 launched on April 11, The Apollo spacecraft was made up of two independent spacecraft joined by a tunnel: orbiter Odyssey, and lander Aquarius.

The crew lived in Odyssey on the journey to the moon. On the evening of April 13, when the crew was nearly , kilometers , miles from Earth and closing in on the moon, mission controller Sy Liebergot saw a low-pressure warning signal on a hydrogen tank in Odyssey.

The signal could have shown a problem, or could have indicated the hydrogen just needed to be resettled by heating and fanning the gas inside the tank. That procedure was called a "cryo stir", and was supposed to stop the supercold gas from settling into layers. Related: This stunning 4K video re-creates Apollo 13's perilous trip around the moon. Swigert flipped the switch for the routine procedure.

A moment later, the entire spacecraft shook. Alarm lights lit up in Odyssey and in Mission Control as oxygen pressure fell and power disappeared.