NASA

 

 

On this day in 1958, the U.S. Congress passed legislation establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a civilian agency responsible for coordinating America’s activities in space, on July 29, 1958.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/july-29/nasa-created

NASA has since sponsored space expeditions, both human and mechanical, that have yielded vital information about the solar system and universe. It has also launched numerous earth-orbiting satellites that have been instrumental in everything from weather forecasting to navigation to global communications.

NASA was created in response to the Soviet Union’s October 4, 1957 launch of its first satellite, Sputnik I. The 183-pound, basketball-sized satellite orbited the earth in 98 minutes. The Sputnik launch caught Americans by surprise and sparked fears that the Soviets might also be capable of sending missiles with nuclear weapons from Europe to America. The United States prided itself on being at the forefront of technology, and, embarrassed, immediately began developing a response, signaling the start of the U.S.-Soviet space race.

On November 3, 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik II, which carried a dog named Laika. In December, America attempted to launch a satellite of its own, called Vanguard, but it exploded shortly after takeoff. On January 31, 1958, things went better with Explorer I, the first U.S. satellite to successfully orbit the earth.

In July of that year, Congress passed legislation officially establishing NASA from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and other government agencies, and confirming the country’s commitment to winning the space race. In May 1961, President John F. Kennedy declared that America should put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. On July 20, 1969, NASA’s Apollo 11 mission achieved that goal and made history when astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon, famously declaring “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

WATCH: Footage from the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing

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 1986 and the Columbia space shuttle in 2003.

Here are some surprising facts about NASA:

1)    Vodka had a lot to do with the launching of SPUTNIK, and the link below provides the details:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2009/11/vodka-and-internet.html

2)   Roughly 7% of the American public still believes that the moon landing was faked.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/3712/landing-man-moon-publics-view.aspx

 

3)   The moon landing was made possible due to the efforts of three black women in the early 1960’s. One of them is Katherine Johnson – a fact that people like Stephen Miller will never accept.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Johnson

Creola Katherine Johnson (née Coleman, previously Goble; August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020) was an American mathematician and human computer whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights During her 33-year career at NASA and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform tasks previously requiring humans. The space agency noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist".

Johnson's work included calculating trajectories, launch windows, and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights, including those for astronauts Alan Shepard (the first American in space) and John Glenn (the first American in orbit), and rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar Module and command module on flights to the Moon. Her calculations were also essential to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, and she worked on plans for a human mission to Mars.

In 2015 President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2016, she received the Silver Snoopy Award from NASA astronaut Leland D. Melvin and a NASA Group Achievement Award. She was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. In 2019, the United States Congress awarded Johnson the Congressional Gold Medal and NASA announced the establishment of the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility in her home state of West Virginia  In 2021, she was posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame

There are some events in our history that we will never forget.

When (and where) we were when we got married.

We all know exactly where we were when we heard that JFK had been shot.

We all know exactly where we were when Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon.

To give you an idea who remarkable the moon landing was, consider these facts:

  

A modern iPhone is millions of times more powerful than the technology NASA used during the 1969 moon landing, possessing vastly superior processor speeds, RAM, and storage capacity.

 

Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (1969)

 

• Processor Speed: Operated at roughly 0.043 MHz.
• RAM / Memory: Had about 4 KB to 64 KB of total memory (with magnetic core RAM around 2 KB to 4 KB).
• Storage: Limited read-only core memory equivalent to roughly 32 KB to 72 KB. [1,
•  
• Modern iPhone (Today)

• Processor Speed: Runs well over 2,400 MHz (2.4+ GHz) across multiple cores, making it over 100,000 times faster in raw processing.
• RAM / Memory: Features 6 GB to 8 GB+ of RAM—millions of times larger than the Apollo system.

• Storage: Offers storage capacities up to 1 TB (1,000,000,000 KB), millions of times more capacity than the historic guidance hardware.