The US established NASA in 1958 to gather civil and scientific space studies under one roof in 1958 under the influence of increasing space competition with the Soviet Socialist Republics Union (USSR) during the Cold War.
NASA, which came to the agenda with the aim of sending people to the Moon in the early years of its establishment, conducts research in many areas from Apollo duties to Mars discovery vehicles, from space telescopes to the Sun to observation.
AA correspondent, NASA’nın compiled the prominent work.
“Small for human beings, a big step for humanity”
NASA’s Apollo program was launched in 1961 upon US President John F. Kennedy’s goal of “sending people to the Moon until 1970 and bringing them back”.
While a total of 17 missions were planned within the scope of the program, 6 of them resulted in landing on the Moon.
In this context, the US sent Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin Aldrin to the Moon on July 20, 1969 with a mission of Apollo 11. Two astronauts outside Collins in the command module landed on the moon surface.
As the first person to set foot on the Moon, Armstrong said during the descent, “A big step for humanity is a big step for humanity.” His word was also engraved in memory.
Within the framework of NASA’s Apollo program, 12 astronauts set foot on the moon surface. The program ended in 1972 with Apollo 17 mission.
The goal of sending astronauts to the Moon again
NASA, which made its last manned flight to the Moon in 1972, is preparing to send the astronauts to the Moon with the Artemis program after about half a century.
Artemis I, the first stage of the program, was launched on 16 November 2022 without a crew. Within the scope of the task, Orion Spacecraft made a total of 25 days of flight by taking a tour in the moon orbit and successfully landed on the Pacific Ocean on 11 December 2022.
The second stage of the program is planned to reach the orbit without landing the Moon and then return to Earth.
In this position, which will last for about 10 days and will be implemented in April 2026, astronauts will test Orion’s maneuverability with Orion’s life support systems during a 10,300 -kilometer month’s journey.
If everything progresses as planned, people will examine the South Pole of the Moon for the first time.
Beyond landing on the Moon, the program aims to create the infrastructure of long -term space tasks that will carry humanity to Mars.
Search for life on Mars
The Mariner Series, one of NASA’s early discovery programs, covered unmanned spacecrafts for Mercury, Venus and Mars between 1962 and 1973.
These tasks provided the first close -up images and data on neighboring planets in the Solar System.
The Mariner 9 mission was the vehicle that entered the orbit of Mars for the first time and discovered the volcanoes on the planet and large canyons. Until then, scientists thought that the surface of Mars was similar to the Moon.
The Curiosity vehicle, which lands on the Red Planet in 2012, is investigating whether there is water on the surface of the planet in the past and collects data on climatic conditions.
The Perseverance vehicle, which was sent in 2021, is also gathering rock and land examples in the planet’s Jezero Crater.
Experts think that these examples can carry clues as to whether microbial life in the past.
Space telescopes
The vehicles such as Kepler Space Telescope, launched by NASA in 2009, discovered planets in the orbit of other stars outside the solar system.
Since its launch in April 1990, Hubble Space Telescope has been providing scientific data through observations about star formation, black holes and distant galaxies.
The James Webb Space Telescope was also launched in 2021 to explore the history of the previously formed galaxies and the history of the universe. Among the remarkable discoveries of the telescope are many stars, the other and young galaxies.
Source: OriginalArticle