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The principles of rocketry were first tested more than 2,000 years ago, but it's only been within the past 70 years or so that we have built rockets to explore space.

Today, rockets routinely loft spacecraft off Earth, sending satellites to low-Earth orbit or cargo to the International Space Station. And with the commercial space industry booming, astronauts now regularly travel to and from the orbiting lab, carrying scientific experiments with them.

New developments have even seen reusable rockets become common, landing back on Earth autonomously, ready to be used again.

Early rocketry

There is evidence that rocket technology, or the early fundamentals of rocketry, was used thousands of years ago, as early as 400 B.C., for example.

In an experiment at that time, Archytas, a Greek philosopher and mathematician, showed off a pseudo-rocket: a wooden pigeon suspended on wires. The pigeon was propelled by escaping steam, according to NASA (opens in new tab).

Around 300 years after the pigeon experiment, the Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria is said to have invented the aeolipile (also called Hero's engine), NASA added. This is a sphere-shaped device that sat on top of a boiling pool of water. Gas from the steaming water went inside of the sphere and escaped through two L-shaped tubes on opposite sides. The escaping steam created thrust that would make the sphere rotate.

Further developments in early rocket technology were recorded in the 9th century when Chinese monks developed what is now called "gunpowder," a mixture of saltpeter (potassium nitrate), sulfur and charcoal. Saltpeter was theorized to have life-extending properties and it was that interest in seeking a sort of immortality that helped lead to gunpowder's development, according to ThoughtCo (opens in new tab).

"During the Tang Dynasty, around 850 A.D., an enterprising alchemist - whose name has been lost to history - mixed 75 parts saltpeter with 15 parts charcoal and 10 parts sulfur. This mixture had no discernable life-lengthening properties, but it did explode with a flash and a bang when exposed to an open flame," ThoughtCo wrote.

"According to a text from that era," ThoughtCo continued, "smoke and flames result, so that [the alchemists'] hands and faces have been burnt, and even the whole house where they were working burned down."

The first military use of rocket technology was also recorded in China later in 1232 CE, according to Smithsonian Magazine (opens in new tab). The Chinese used "flying fire lances" against the Mongol Empire as they moved against the former Chinese capital Kaifeng. (Today, it is a prefecture in Henan province.)

Smithsonian researchers led by Frank Winter, former curator of rockets at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, dug deeper into these early "rockets" and discovered that the lances arose from a more modest device called the "ground rat" in the 12th century, described in a book called Rustic Tales in Eastern Ch'i (Ch'in yeh-yu).

The "ground rat" was a self-propelled device that was more like a firework, "made from a bamboo tube filled with gunpowder that shot about in all directions on the floor," Smithsonian Magazine wrote. "During a royal banquet in the 13th century, the wife of Emperor Li Chung was terrified when a ground rat scurried beneath her chair. The festivities abruptly ended and those responsible for the firework display were imprisoned."

Roger Bacon, a Franciscan English philosopher and monk who dabbled in experimental science, is the first person on record in what some call "Western science" to provide directions for making gunpowder, according to Britannica (opens in new tab). In the 1200s, he speculated gunpowder might be useful in warfare, foreshadowing the mixture's future name and use in guns the following century.

Meanwhile in China, the possibilities of this new gunpowder and rocket technology sparked a legend surrounding a public official (called a mandarin) named Wan Hu, around 1500 AD.

"As he sat on a chair, the story goes, forty-seven coolies lit forty-seven black-powder rockets that were attached to it. Wan Hu traveled a short distance and then disappeared in an explosion and a cloud of smoke," William E. Burrows wrote in the first chapter of his Pulitzer Prize-nominated book "This New Ocean."

"If it really happened," Burrows mused in the book, "Wan Hu had the triple distinction of being the first person to ride a rocket, the first to fly on a self-propelled, heavier-than-air device, and the first rocket pilot to get killed during a test flight."

A 2004 episode of the television show "Mythbusters"investigated the rocket chair's possibilities on television.

Rockets in theory and practice

By the 16th century, early rocket technology was regularly used in military skirmishes in Asia and Europe as well as in fireworks displays.

While likely many people were musing on rocketry's potential during this era, we'll highlight just a couple. Austrian Conrad Haas created a "treatise" on rocketry technology, including crewed rockets, in the mid-16th century and the work laid undiscovered by historians until 1961, according to the European Union-funded site "Digital Treasures." (opens in new tab)

A century later, Kazimierz Siemienowicz, a Polish-Lithuanian general of the 17th century, published his book, The Complete Art of Artillery, which included designs for rockets and multistage rockets, NASA says.

"He published a design for multistage rockets that was to become fundamental rocket technology for rockets heading for outer space," the agency wrote in a brief guide to rocketry (opens in new tab). "Siemienowicz also proposed batteries for military rocket launching, and delta-wing stabilizers to replace the guiding rods currently in use with military rockets."

Briefly, parallel developments in science and engineering helped contribute to rocketry's development. Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) first described the property of inertia, which means an object in motion remains in motion while an object at rest remains at rest (outside of something pushing upon it).

Galileo's work previewed the physics pioneered by English scientist Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Newton formulated theories of gravitation and motion that fundamentally redefined how we think about planetary motion and movement through space. Newton's third law of motion, which (simply put) says that every action induces an opposite reaction, underlies the principle of rocketry.

In the early 19th century, Sir William Congreve experimented with numerous rocket designs for military purposes, ultimately coming up with what we today term the "Congreve rocket." Britannica describes (opens in new tab) the up to 60-pound (27-kg) rocket as stick-guided, meaning that users had a bit of control over its path. Famously, the Americans and the British both used Congreve rockets during the war of 1812; Francis Scott Key's "The Star Spangled Banner" refers to "the rockets' red glare" at the Battle of Fort McHenry.

Meanwhile, French science fiction Jules Verne (1828-1905) envisioned a cannon bringing astronauts to the moon in 1865, just over a century before it actually happened for the first time during Apollo 8 in 1968. It doesn't quite describe rocketry in its modern form, but Verne's vision was influential for rocketry pioneers for generations after its publication.

'Fathers' of rocketry

In the modern era, spaceflight historians often acknowledge three "fathers of rocketry" who helped push the first rockets into space. Admittedly, the term singles out a person who may have been in charge of a large team, and also comes from an era when people were less sensitive about the use of gendered language.

Still, these individuals have a large footprint on the development of rocketry as we understand it today. Only one of the three survived long enough to see rockets being used for space exploration.

Russian Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) published what is now known as the "rocket equation" in 1903, which you can read more about in this European Space Agency description (opens in new tab) of the mathematics. Simply put, the equation concerns relationships between rocket speed and mass, as well as how fast the gas is leaving when it exits the propellant system's exhaust and how much propellant there is.

Robert Goddard (1882-1945) was an American physicist who sent the first liquid-fueled rocket aloft in Auburn, Massachusetts, on March 16, 1926. He had two U.S. patents for using a liquid-fueled rocket and also for a two- or three-stage rocket using solid fuel, according to NASA (opens in new tab).

Hermann Oberth (1894-1989) was born in Romania and later moved to Germany; as a Nazi engineer his legacy is complicated given that he worked for an oppressive, racist empire during the Second World War. His studies on multistage rockets were first used for Nazi attacks on Britain using the A4 rocket, better known to us as the V2. The rocket, notes a German museum of Oberth (opens in new tab), "utilized 95 of Oberth's inventions and suggestions." Oberth lived well into the space shuttle era, allowing him to see humans fly to space and use early reusable spaceships.

Rockets in early spaceflight

Following World War II, several German and Nazi rocket scientists emigrated to both the Soviet Union and the United States, assisting those countries in the Space Race of the 1960s. In that contest, both countries vied to demonstrate technological and military superiority, using space as the frontier.

The most famous of these engineers was Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977) who was also a Nazi with a complicated legacy. After emigrating to the United States, he became most famous for leading the design of the Saturn V rocket that took people to the moon, and popularizing space travel through Disney productions.

Describing even the early history of rockets and all their milestones is admittedly a book-length endeavor, as it also involves elements such as the so-called Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union that spurred tremendous and rapid developments in rocketry in just a couple of decades.

The history also includes military history in Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States that underlay the development of space technology, along with the ongoing privatization of rocket development in the United States and later, Europe. A short article unfortunately cannot cover all these developments.

To learn more, you can start with Space.com's history of every crewed spacecraft that ever was used. We also recommend the International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems (opens in new tab) by Joseph Hopkins Jr., Joshua Hopkins and Steven Isakowitz.

Here is a quick timeline of the first few years of rocketry: A rocket was used for the first time to send something into space on the Sputnik rocket mission, which launched the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 on Oct. 4, 1957. The United States used a modified Jupiter-C military rocket (called Juno-1) to heft its Explorer 1 satellite into space on Feb. 1, 1958, following an infamous disaster with another, largely untested rocket type.

It took several more years before either country felt confident enough to use rockets to send people into space; both countries started with animals ( monkeys and dogs, for example). Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space, leaving Earth on April 12, 1961, aboard a Vostok-K rocket for a multiorbit flight. About three weeks later, Alan Shepard made the first American suborbital flight on a Redstone rocket. A few missions later in NASA's Mercury program, the agency switched to Atlas rockets to achieve orbit, and in 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth.

When aiming for the moon, NASA used the Saturn V rocket, which, at 363 feet tall, included three stages - the last one designed to be powerful enough to break away from Earth's gravity. The rocket successfully launched six moon-landing missions between 1969 and 1972. The Soviet Union developed a moon rocket called N-1, but its program was permanently suspended after multiple delays and problems, including a deadly explosion.

NASA's space-shuttle program (1981 to 2011) used solid rockets for the first time to boost humans into space, which is notable, because unlike liquid rockets, they cannot be turned off. The shuttle itself had three liquid-fueled engines, with two solid rocket boosters strapped on the sides. In 1986, a solid rocket booster's O-ring failed and caused a catastrophic explosion, killing seven astronauts aboard the space shuttle Challenger. The solid rocket boosters were redesigned after the incident.

Rockets have since been used to send spacecraft farther into our solar system: past the moon, Venus and Mars in the early 1960s, which later expanded into the exploration of dozens of moons and planets. Rockets have carried spacecraft throughout the solar system so that astronomers now have imagery of every planet (as well as the dwarf planet Pluto), many moons, comets, asteroids and smaller objects. And, because of powerful and advanced rockets, the Voyager 1 spacecraft was able to leave our solar system and reach interstellar space.

Rockets of today and tomorrow

Several companies in many countries now manufacture uncrewed and crewed rockets - the United States, India, Europe, China and Russia, to name a few - and routinely send military and civilian payloads into space. Each of these countries has their own complex history of rocketry across many booster types, which often come with numerous variants for heavier loads or smaller loads, or different celestial destinations.

Meanwhile, crewed spaceflight continues to proliferate. The Russians have used variants of their Soyuz rocket for decades, bringing humans into space across several different versions. NASA now has two streams of rocket providers, one set commercial and one set agency-directed.

For International Space Station missions, the agency is using the SpaceX Crew Dragon system aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, modified from a booster variant used for satellites; the hope is to use In the near-future, NASA also plans to use a Northrop Grumman Starliner spacecraft, which would launch aboard either Northrop Grumman's Antares rocket or United Launch Alliance's Atlas V. Further afield, NASA is also developing a Space Launch System to launch astronauts to the moon and potentially (eventually) Mars, following at least one SLS test launch this decade.

Rocket technology continues to change rapidly in private industry, with milestones often accruing in a period of just months. We'll just point to a few trends. SpaceX and Blue Origin have pioneered the use of self-landing rockets. Numerous companies are launching clutches of satellites on a single rocket, as satellite technology continues to improve and miniaturize. Rockets are getting lighter and more adaptable through 3D printing, more efficient fuels and continued improvements in machine learning (artificial intelligence).

As of early 2022, space tourists and commercial astronauts now have choices of several rocket or spaceplane systems developed by Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX. Space tourism may be the trend to watch for the 2020s and 2030s, although for now it is largely confined to the super-rich.

The most high-profile future rocket system in development is Starship and its Super Heavy rocket, a SpaceX project that is expected to bring NASA astronauts to the moon in the short term and settlers to Mars in the much longer term. The system changes quite rapidly between iterations and as of early 2022, it has yet to achieve a spaceflight. But founder Elon Musk has been committed to the project for many years and regularly shares updates on Twitter in between launches.

Additional resources

Bibliography

"Roger Bacon: English Philosopher and Scientist." Theodore Crowley. Britannica. (2022, Jan. 1). https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roger-Bacon

"Brief History of Rockets." NASA. (2021, May 13.) https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/TRC/Rockets/history_of_rockets.html (opens in new tab)

"On the Making of Cannons and Missiles." Gabi Rudinger. Digital Treasures. (2021, Feb. 20). https://www.digitaltreasures.eu/on-the-making-of-cannons-and-missiles/

"The Invention of Gunpowder: A History." Kallie Szczepanski. ThoughtCo. (2019, July 3). https://www.thoughtco.com/invention-of-gunpowder-195160

"Dr. Robert H. Goddard, American Rocketry Pioneer." NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. (2017, Aug. 3). https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/about/history/dr_goddard.html

"Congreve Rocket." The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. Britannica. (2014, July 24). https://www.britannica.com/technology/Congreve-rocket/additional-info#history

"The History of Rocket Science." Jimmy Stamp. Smithsonian Magazine. (2013, February.) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/the-history-of-rocket-science-4078981/

"A Man And An Equation." European Space Agency. (2012, Oct. 14). https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2012/10/14/a-man-and-an-equation/

International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems, Fourth Edition. Joseph Hopkins Jr., Joshua Hopkins and Steven Isakowitz. (2012, Aug. 27). https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/4.475917

"Hermann Oberth." Hermann Oberth Raumfahrt Museum. (n.d.) http://www.oberth-museum.org/index_e.html

"A Pictorial History of Rockets." NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center. (n.d.) https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/pdf/530422main_Pictorial%20History%20of%20Rockets.pdf

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The principles of rocketry were first tested more than 2,000 years ago, but it's only been within the past 70 years or so that we have built rockets to explore space. Today, rockets routinely loft spacecraft off Earth, sending satellites to low-Earth orbit or cargo to the International Space Station.

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3 Questions for NASA Pioneer Ellen Ochoa

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Biography

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Dr. Ellen Ochoa is a veteran of three NASA Space Shuttle flights. She has logged over 719 hours in space, traveling four million miles in one mission alone!

Before NASA selected Ellen to become an astronaut, Ellen proved herself on Earth by getting a doctorate degree in electrical engineering and co-inventing three patents for optical engineering systems.

Born in southern California in 1958, Ellen was interested in space exploration as a girl. NASA hired its first women astronauts when she was studying physics in college in the 1970's. Ellen saw the astronaut program as a way of combining her interest in research and engineering with space exploration. She became an astronaut in 1991.

In April, 1993, Ellen became the first Hispanic-American woman in space. As a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, mission STS-56, she deployed and captured a research satellite used for the study of the sun. During the nine-day mission, she also took part in studies of Earth's atmosphere and the effect of the sun on Earth's climate and environment. In November 1994, Ellen was also payload commander aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis for mission STS-66.

Ellen spent a number of years working on the development of the International Space Station. In May and June 1999, Ellen flew aboard the Discovery, mission STS-96, which became the first Space Shuttle to actually dock with the Space Station. On board the Space Shuttle were supplies to be used by the first crews living and working on the Space Station. Working 200 miles above the Earth, Ellen operated a robot arm that helped transfer four tons of clothing, computers, and medical equipment from one ship to the other.

Ellen plays the flute, flies planes, and enjoys volleyball and bicycling. She and her husband have one son.

Interview Transcript

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Celebrate Hispanic Heritage! Meet Ellen Ochoa

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Dr. Ellen Ochoa is a veteran of three NASA Space Shuttle flights. She has logged over 719 hours in space, traveling four million miles in one mission alone! Before NASA selected Ellen to become an astronaut, Ellen proved herself on Earth by getting a doctorate degree in electrical engineering and co-inventing three patents for optical engineering systems. Born in southern California in 1958, Ellen was interested in space exploration as a girl.

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How Do Astronauts Eat in Space?

Astronaut and STS-46 commander Loren J. Shriver, eating floating chocolate candies aboard space shuttle Atlantis (31 July-8 Aug. 1992)

Living and working in a microgravity environment requires culinary ingenuity and creativity. Did you know that bread is not allowed on the International Space Station (ISS)? This is because it produces crumbs that become unmanageable when floating about the space station. The solution: Tortillas! Did you know that your sense of taste can change while in microgravity? A favorite food item on Earth can taste terrible in space. Continue reading to learn more about dining on the ISS.

History of Space Food

In the early days of space flight, Mercury astronauts would consume puree squeezed from tubes and cubes of dry goods. Astronaut John Glenn was the first to eat in space, proving that swallowing and digestion are possible in microgravity. During the Gemini missions, astronauts began consuming freeze-dried food and powdered beverages, which they rehydrated with cold water prior to consumption. The Apollo Program continued to use freeze-dried food and powdered beverages, but with the luxury of hot water if desired. These meals, similar to "Meals, Ready to Eat" (MREs) used by United States armed forces, are still used today, but with improved taste, texture, and options.

Five members of Expedition 60 eating dinner inside the Zvezda service module. Top is Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency. From left to right: NASA astronauts Andrew Morgan and Nick Hague, Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Aleksey Ovchinin (Aug. 2, 2019).

Food Preparation Process

Food for NASA's current astronauts is prepared and packaged at the Space Food Systems Laboratory at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. There, astronauts select the meals they would like for their mission. The lab creates food that is nutritious, ensuring peak health and performance for the crew, and is an important entity for the research and development of meals for long-duration missions of up to five years. Long missions require space foods to have a long shelf-life, meaning it is safe to eat after months or years at "ambient," or room temperature.

When most people think of space food, they think of "astronaut ice cream," which is ice cream that has undergone the food preservation process called freeze drying. The first step of the freeze drying process involves freezing fully prepared food at approximately minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Next, the food is put into a vacuum chamber and heated so the water content of the food sublimates, or transforms directly from a solid (ice) to a gas (water vapor). The water vapor is sucked out of the vacuum chamber and the process is repeated as many times as necessary to remove nearly all of the food's water content. This process kills some but not all bacteria, however it does stop bacteria from multiplying and spoiling the food. It essentially leaves the food "frozen" in time.

Additional benefits of freeze-drying are that it drastically reduces the weight of the food item, which means a lighter payload for launch, and it preserves the most nutrients and is easier to rehydrate when compared to other preservation methods.

Other common processes that ensure the longevity of space food are thermostabilization, which exposes cans or pouches to high heat and pressure, and irradiation, which exposes food and packaging to ionizing radiation. Both processes eliminate bacteria that could spoil the food, compromise its shelf-life and make it inconsumable. Astronauts may also eat normal pantry goods in their natural form such as nuts, granola bars, candies, cookies and more, repackaged at the Space Food Systems Laboratory.

Utensils and bags of food on tray. Photograph taken at Johnson Space Center's Food Tasting lab.

How to Eat in Space

Space food commonly comes in plastic packaging or cans. To prevent their food from floating away at meal time, packaging has Velcro patches so it can be attached to a tray or table. Tape, tethers, and magnets are also used to affix food items to surfaces. Additionally, meal time on the ISS requires an additional utensil we typically don't keep at the dinner table on Earth - Scissors! Scissors are an essential utensil for opening the vacuum sealed bags and retort pouches in which space food is packaged.

One might think that soup is not an option for astronauts, however, foods with higher water content aren't too much of a problem. Liquid generally stays attached to its package and the utensil used to eat it because of surface tension. However, when drinking rehydrated beverages from a pouch, specially adapted straws are important. The straws have a clasp to prevent liquid from floating out of the straw. This is different than eating soup out of a package, as once the water travels up the straw, it has very little surface to cling to and can float away.

For the same reason that bread is not allowed on the ISS, astronauts cannot season their food with standard ground spices. Pepper tastes much better in your mouth than it does floating into your eyes. The solution: package the seasonings in liquid form.

After the meal is complete, cleaning up is a little different. There's no soapy sink to wash your hands and utensils. Astronauts will use disinfectant wipes or gently squeeze some water and diluted liquid soap onto their skin, then towel the excess water off. When throwing away their food packaging, it's important that astronauts consume the entirety of their meals. This is to ensure they get sufficient calories, but also to prevent the extra food from spoiling and creating smelly garbage on the ISS.

Tasting in Space

Most people don't imagine that gravity has an effect on our sense of taste. Turns out it does, indirectly. When floating in a microgravity environment, the tissues in our bodies become more evenly dispersed instead of being pulled down to our legs and feet. This causes astronauts to experience puffy, or more rounded faces.

When we have a stuffy nose or sinuses, gravity is what causes our nose to run out our nostrils or down the back of our throats. In addition to a puffy face, the absence of gravity leads to congestion, even in perfectly healthy astronauts. If you've ever eaten with a head cold, or pinched your nose shut when you had to eat something you didn't like, you know that smell is an essential to taste. This congestion makes it difficult to smell acutely and causes food to taste different or rather bland. Because of this, astronauts often prefer foods with intense flavors, particularly sweet, salty, bitter, and particularly spicy.

Taste of Space 2021 at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex

Luckily for those of us on Earth, we are able to enjoy freshly made food with exciting textures and crunch. This year's Taste of Space: Fall Bites! takes place from October 8 to November 5, 2021. Come treat your taste buds to fun new seasonal flavors at Orbit Cafe and Moon Rock Cafe. These chef-inspired meals can also be enjoyed with a local brew (sold separately). Kids can create their own signature beverage flavors with Pepsi drink machines. For dessert, Milky Way will offer a Pumpkin Caramel Éclair. Beer lovers will want to stop by Planet Play Lounge to enjoy local seasonal brews from the Space Coast!

Guests may also partake in Taste of Space: A Culinary Journey on November 5, 2021. Join veteran NASA astronauts as you begin in the Rocket Garden with unique appetizers, then walk to Rocket Garden Cafe for award-winning clam chowder and fresh salads. The surf n' turf "main course" will be served in Dine With An Astronaut. End the evening underneath space shuttle Atlantis with a Marstini shake off, some sweet treats, music and entertainment. Each course will include a sample size wine or beer pairing.

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How Do Astronauts Eat in Space? Living and working in a microgravity environment requires culinary ingenuity and creativity. Did you know that bread is not allowed on the International Space Station (ISS)? This is because it produces crumbs that become unmanageable when floating about the space station. The solution: Tortillas!

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Join a game of kahoot here. Kahoot! is a free game-based learning platform that makes it fun to learn - any subject, in any language, on any device, for all ages!

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An overview of our local neighborhood in the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy.

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Trailer | Chasing the Moon | American Experience | PBS

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In this extended lesson plan, students will use the Times archive to explore the questions: What was the space race? Who won it? And why did it matter? Then they will connect the past to the current competition for space.

Fifty-two years ago, the Apollo 11 crew landed on the moon - the culmination of a decade-long "space race" between the United States and the Soviet Union - widely regarded as one of humanity's greatest achievements. Today, there is a different kind of race being run, as private companies compete to take ordinary citizens to space, the moon, Mars and beyond.

In this lesson, students will look closely at original Times reporting on the space race and explore the questions: What was the space race? Who won it? And why does it still matter?

We begin with a short quiz on the space race as a warm-up activity and later offer several creative options for students to apply and extend what they learned from the Times archives, such as creating a children's book for "hidden figures" of the space program and curating a museum exhibition. Finally, we invite students to connect the lessons of the past to our current era of space exploration and debate whether we should still be seeking out new adventures in outer space.

What's Included in This Resource

Buzz Aldrin left this boot print in the lunar soil at Tranquillity Base. Credit... NASA

Part I: What do you know about the space race?
Have you ever dreamed of traveling to space? Do you think you will ever live on another planet?

Today, private companies like Blue Origin, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are vying for supremacy to make space tourism a reality. But over 60 years ago, a space race began between the two most powerful nations on earth.

What do you know about the space race? Who won, how and why? And what were its consequences?

OK ... pop quiz on the space race. (Don't worry: It's not graded!)

1. Many historians date the beginning of the space race to Oct. 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched a ________.

a) giant slingshot that grazed the moon
b) jet-propulsion plane that broke the sound barrier called the Khrushchev
c) supersonic missile called Red Dawn
d) the world's first artificial satellite named Sputnik

2. The moon is roughly ______ miles away from Earth.

a) 1,000
b) 23,890
c) 100,000
d) 238,900

3. Which of the following animals have been in space?

a) Jellyfish
b) Chimpanzee
c) Pig
d) Dog
e) All of the above

4. What were the Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong's famous words as he stepped on to the surface of the moon?

a) "So cool!"
b) "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind"
c) "To infinity and beyond!"
d) "We have nothing to fear but fear itself"

5. The footprint on the moon left by the Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin (pictured above) will last for how long?

a) Just a few more months
b) 10 years
c) One hundred thousand years
d) Tens of millions of years

So, how did you do on the quiz? ( See the answer key at the bottom of the lesson.) Congrats if you impressed yourself! But don't worry if you didn't ace it; there will be more chances to learn fascinating information and stories about the quest to reach the moon.

What questions do you have about the space race? What do you want to know more about?
Part 2: Watch a short video on the origins of the space race.

Next, watch this six-minute video segment from " Chasing the Moon: American Experience, " by PBS, on the origins of the space race and how it grew out of the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Then, consider the following prompts in writing or in discussion with a partner:

The Saturn V rocket carrying Apollo 11 on the mobile launch platform on its way to Launch Complex 39A at Cape Canaveral on May 17, 1969. Credit... Sspl/Getty Images

The space race began in 1957 with the Soviet Union's surprise launch of Sputnik, the first-ever artificial satellite sent into space - opening a new front in the Cold War for the two world superpowers. After a Soviet cosmonaut became the first person to orbit Earth on April 12, 1961, the newly elected President John F. Kennedy committed the United States to the ambitious goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

With the moon landing on July 20, 1969, America effectively "won" the space race that began with Sputnik's launch 12 years earlier. But public interest in the space program soon waned. By the end of 1972, the last of the 12 men to walk on the moon had returned home, and no one has been there since.

Below, we provide links to 24 original articles from Times coverage of the space race from 1957-1975. Scan the entire archive collection and read the title and summary for each article. Then, working individually or as a research team, choose at least ONE article from each of the THREE sections to read. As you conduct your research, consider the following questions:
Essential Questions
Timeline Activity: You can also make note of important dates, events and people involved in the space race and then create a visual timeline - either on paper (perhaps using a free downloadable timeline printout) or using a free online tool, such as TimelineJS or StoryMapJS. Or, if you are in a classroom context, you can create a human timeline. Whichever method you choose, you should be creative and use colors, symbols, images and text to tell the chronological story of the space race.
I: The Space Race Begins: 1957-1960
" President Voices Concern on U.S. Missiles Program, But Not on the Satellite" (Oct. 10, 1957)
Following Sputnik, President Dwight Eisenhower says that he is not worried about a race for space, but announces that the U.S. will launch its own satellite by the end of the year.

" Soviet Fires New Satellite, Carrying Dog" (Nov. 3, 1957)
The Soviet Union surprises the world again and launches Sputnik 2, another satellite, but this one with a passenger: a dog named Laika.

" Scientists Wonder if Shot Nears Moon" (Nov. 5, 1957)
The growing fears in America and across the globe are captured in this article that describes how scientists speculated that a Soviet rocket might be en route to strike the moon with a hydrogen bomb in the midst of its eclipse.

III: The Finish Line: 1968-1975
" Astronauts Examine 'Vast, Lonely' Place" (Dec. 25, 1968)
The Apollo 8 voyage is the first time that humans orbit the moon. "Earthrise," a photograph from the mission awes the world.

" Nationalism Is Obsolete in Outer Space" (May 16, 1969)
A Times Op-Ed on the failure of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to use accomplishments in space as a means of unifying mankind.

" Men Walk on Moon" (July 21, 1969)
Apollo 11: The first moon landing. Millions across the globe watch the historic achievement.

" Astronauts Back, Weak and Wobbly" (June 23, 1973)
The Skylab 1 astronauts, weak and wobbly and suffering some dizziness, returned to Earth after a record 28 days aboard the nation's first orbiting space station.

" U.S. and Soviet Astronauts Unite Ships and Then Join in Historic Handshakes" (July 18, 1975)
The Apollo-Soyez Project is the first crewed international space mission, carried out jointly by the United States and the Soviet Union.

If you have more time, we encourage you to do your own research in the Times archives using "Space," "NASA," "Apollo Mission" and "Moon" as search terms, and October 1957 to Dec. 31, 1975, as a date range.

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Almost Famous: The Lost Astronaut

In 1963, Ed Dwight Jr. was poised to be NASA's first African-American astronaut. Until suddenly he wasn't.

A monument is an ideal. A memorial is a memorial of something that really happened in life. I could have been the first black guy in space. Was that my fate that I'll be remembered for that, for something that I didn't do? Think about that one. How the hell do you get famous for something you didn't do? There rest burdens heavier than have rested on the shoulders of any president since the time of Lincoln. In the '60s, there was a lot of tension, an incredible amount of tension. In 1959, the first seven astronauts were appointed by Eisenhower, seven guys that become immortal by proclamation only. The way the story goes, the Kennedy White House said, we'll satisfy our black community by making a black astronaut. One black guy on a Wheaties box. O.K., but how do you make an astronaut? I was born in Kansas City in 1933. I wanted to be an artist. My dad said, "No, no, no, no. You're going to go to engineering school. You're going to be an engineer." All the pilots, the good pilots, the aces, they all grew up on farms. Every one of them. We lived on a farm. And the Fairfax airport was within walking distance. I didn't know where these airplanes had been when they came and landed. And I didn't know where the hell they were going when they took off. But it had to be exciting. I did get the flying bug. I was down there every day. I became their mascot. I'd hang out in the maintenance shacks. And I'd hand the guys the tools. And after a while, I said, "Why don't you just take me up?" [AIRCRAFT ENGINE BUZZING] Immediately, when you can see past the horizon, you say, oh, my god. All of a sudden, your world expands to this bigger and bigger and bigger space. That whole expanse of stuff, you get even more curious about it. Why were we here? And what part do we play? And what, if anything, can we do about it? I was probably 18. And I had a paper route for the white newspaper. And I had a paper route for the black newspaper. On the front page of my black newspaper was a black jet pilot standing on the wing of an F-86 Saber jet. My world about exploded. Oh, my god, they're letting black folks fly airplanes. I almost stopped throwing papers that minute. I went straight to the Air Force recruiting office. By the time I got to be upper class, I had all these stripes on my arm. I had my own office. I was an officer all the way through the whole thing. And lo and behold, I get this letter, all the Pentagon trapping, all this stuff on it. Direction of the president, opportunity to be an astronaut. So I took it to my boss and he said, "Tear it up. You don't want any part of that, man. They're going to make hamburger out of you down there, buddy. Ed, stick with us. You've got a career. You're going to be a general. You have a family here. So leave it alone." But my curiosity overwhelmed me. So I secretly sent all my information in. And within days, days, not weeks, months, years, I got an assignment to go to Edwards Air Force Base for me to enter experimental test pilot school. I was a Kennedy boy. That's the term they used, Kennedy boy. I knew full well when I got on the base that it wasn't going to be a cakewalk. It seems like every street at Edwards Air Force Base is named after a dead test pilot. Every time I strapped that airplane on my behind, I don't know whether I'm coming back. And on top of that, I was told, Chuck Yeager, the guy that was running the whole damn school, had called the students and the instructor staff into the auditorium and said, here's our plan. Don't talk to him. Don't socialize with him. Don't drink with him. Don't invite him to your parties. Just ignore him like he doesn't exist. And in six months, he'll be gone, because that'll psychologically break him. He'll quit. And so they set about doing that. That's Chuck Yeager. My dad had issues in his work world. Whether you're a baseball star like he was or whatever you did, I mean, you still suffer the ravages of prejudice. And he would go on these rants. "All white men are the worst people in the world and they'll stab you in the back." But my mother had the last word. "Don't pay any attention to what your dad said. All people are equal." And those were the last words I heard every day until I was 18 years old. You can teach your brain to help you, or you can teach your brain to destroy you. And your brain will react to what it's been told. Every day of my life, my mother told me how much she loved me and how I could do anything in the universe. I don't care what it was, you have the ability to do that, as long as you're prepared for it. That removed any other force coming into my space plane. But if I had all this other trash running around in my head, I wouldn't be able to do any of that kind of stuff. They were announcing names to go into the second phase of it. And of course, that next level moved you on to NASA, which was the third thing. Just graduated from test pilot school and we were all vying for a spot. So guess who's not quitting? Captain Ed Dwight. 29-year-old Negro says he is anxious to go into space. He's Captain Edward Dwight of the Air Force, selected to be an astronaut, the first of his race to be so designated. Captain Dwight and his family got the news at their home at Edwards Air Force Base in California. And of course, that was hot news, I mean, really, really hot news. Place was packed. The press came out from D.C. Cameras were everywhere. All these photographers on me. And they have one cover all the rest of them. Immediately, I was getting 1,500 fan mails a day. And I was on the cover of all these magazines around the world. See, I was being handled out of the White House. So everywhere I went, I was bombarded with it. So there was a lot of unhappy people about this. There's a black guy that can do this? Oh, god, you've got to be kidding me. Kennedy boy, Kennedy boy. All that nonsense, couldn't give it a parking space in my brain. We were in bioastronautics training at Brooks. They were trying to figure out how far they could take a person and break them. They did everything they could possibly do. They'd stick needles in your head and then introduce these waves. Centrifuge training, a lot of guys couldn't handle that. They'd take you up to 15 g's. Of course, your tear ducts close and the tears creep over to here. And they're like bullets when they hit your ears, that thing is so fast. God, I just ate that up. I really enjoyed it. It was just absolutely fabulous. The happy ending of this thing would be going into space. [ROCKET ENGINES BOOMING] O.K., I guess you all know why you're here today and why we're here. We'd like to introduce the new group of 14 astronauts who we've been in the process of selecting for about the last four months. [APPLAUSE] Was there a Negro boy in the last 30 or so that you brought here for consideration? No, there was not. They were announcing a new group of astronauts and I wasn't in that group. A month or so later, Kennedy has been assassinated. Are you now in fact completely out of the astronaut program? Why aren't you an astronaut? Do you feel that what's happened to you was a setback for civil rights opportunities in this country? I would rather not comment on that. I resigned in '66, loaded my Volkswagen to the brim and drove off the base. You know, god, I start getting emotional. [CHUCKLES] I mean, that was tough. Next question. [SLOW STRING MUSIC] If I just receded into nothingness, it would have been all well and good with everybody else, because that's how things are supposed to happen. I would have loved going into space, you know, had this thing all worked out that way. That choice was snatched away from me. So why bother about it, you know? I have to attribute that to some kind of fate. Well, maybe there's some more work for me to do. Maybe my fate was I had to bring the African-American story to the public venue. [SLOW STRING MUSIC] And so I started building things, making things. 129. I've completed 129 memorials since I've done this and over 18,000 gallery pieces. A monument is an ideal. But a memorial is a memorial of something that really happened in life. How do you go from slavery to freedom and accomplishment? What happened? Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth, Dr. King, B.B. King, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, step by step by step by step. Guion Bluford. First African-American in space.

In 1963, Ed Dwight Jr. was poised to be NASA's first African-American astronaut. Until suddenly he wasn't. Credit Credit... Ben Proudfoot

Over 400,000 people worked directly or indirectly with NASA during the decade-long race to put a person on the moon - yet, most of those people and their efforts remain unknown, overlooked or forgotten.

Below, we provide links to nine Times articles reporting on those who have often been left out of the larger narrative of the space race. Choose one or more articles to read, and then consider the following questions:
Essential Questions
Profile Activity: You can also imagine you have been asked to help create a comic or children's book about an inspiring but overlooked space race pioneer to help educate young people. Which aspects of their life, story and achievements would you highlight? What impact would you hope your book would make? You can find free children's bookmaking apps here or here and free comic book apps here and here.
Times Resources

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Earthrise: 50 Years Since Apollo 8

On Christmas Eve, 1968, astronauts orbiting the moon saw Earth rising for the first time.

Fifty years ago, the mightiest rocket ever built rolled out to its launch pad at Cape Kennedy. On the 21st of December, 1968, three men climbed on board for the first voyage to the moon. Before Apollo 8, no human had ever left Earth orbit. Frank Borman, James Lovell Jr. and William Anders became the first men to see the whole Earth from space. They send back grainy footage of Earth to televisions back home. "This transmission is coming to you approximately halfway between the moon and the Earth." In the first broadcast, the Earth was a ghostly sphere, devoid of detail. But in their second transmission, a recognizable Earth wreathed in clouds drifted in and out of view. Their mission was to fly a figure 8 pattern out to the moon, orbit it 10 times and return safely home. But safety and success were not certain. Russian tortoises had survived a flight around the moon and back only three months before, and cosmonauts were rumored to be next. The astronauts worked hard and slept little. And on Christmas Eve, they arrived at the moon. They had only 10 orbits, about 20 hours, to photograph the moon and scout future landing sites. For its first three orbits, the spacecraft was flying backward with its windows angled down toward the surface. On the fourth orbit, Borman rolled the capsule to face forward, just as Earth was rising over the horizon. Anders: "Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! There's the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!" Borman: "Hey, don't take that, it's not scheduled." [chuckles] Anders snapped the first image of Earth taken by humans at the moon. But it was black and white. Anders: "You got a color film, Jim? Hand me a roll of color, quick ..." Lovell: "Oh man, that's great! Where is it?" Anders: "Quick!" Earthrise. Seen for the first time by human eyes. Earthrise wasn't the first image of Earth from the moon. NASA's Lunar Orbiter I turned to watch the Earth set in 1966. A year later, Lunar Orbiter IV caught the double crescent of the moon and the distant Earth. Of all these images, Earthrise is by far the most famous. It took a human behind the camera for humanity to see our world again and know it for the first time. Other Earthrises would follow, as men returned to orbit and walk on the moon. Lovell: "The vast loneliness up here of the moon is awe inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth. The Earth from here is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space." A few hours after Earthrise, the Apollo 8 crew ended a Christmas Eve broadcast by reading from Genesis. Borman: "... And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas; and God saw that it was good. And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth." The Apollo 8 astronauts didn't yet know that their greatest legacy would be a photograph. The round Earth and its thin film of life, suspended in the blackness of space. Like them, we have seen Spaceship Earth. And 50 years later we are still learning to fly and preserve it.

On Christmas Eve, 1968, astronauts orbiting the moon saw Earth rising for the first time.

The Times Opinion columnist Ross Douthat wrote that "what Apollo represents is not goodness but greatness, not moral progress but magnificence, a sublime example of human daring that our civilization hasn't matched since."

However, the Times Science reporter Dennis Overbye wrote: "Having beaten the Russians, we left the moon as awkwardly and cynically as we had embraced it a decade earlier. No goodbyes. No infrastructure, like bases or orbiting stations. Nothing to provide an easy way back. We ghosted it."

Below, we provide links to seven Times articles and Opinion pieces that assess the legacy and lessons of the space race. Choose one or more stories to read, and then consider the following questions:
Essential Questions
Museum Exhibition Activity: Working individually, in teams or as a whole class, you can also curate a space race museum exhibition. What events, people, themes and artifacts would you include? What stories would you emphasize? What would you hope audiences would learn? For tips on creating a classroom museum, read Creating a Student-Run Museum in Your Classroom from Edutopia.
Times Resources

From left, Hayley Arceneaux, Chris Sembroski, Jared Isaacman and Sian Proctor, during a zero gravity flight to train for the Inspiration4 mission in July. In September they became the first all-civilian crew sent into orbit. Related Article. Credit... John Kraus/Inspiration4, via Associated Press

Today, there's a new space race.

This time it's not a race to the moon, but to see who will dominate a future space tourism industry - a competition not between nations but between billionaire entrepreneurs and private spaceflight companies.

This summer, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the British entrepreneur Richard Branson both flew to space in rockets designed by their companies, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic - although both flights were less than for 11 minutes each.

Then, on Sept. 15, a rocket launched by SpaceX, the company founded by the billionaire Elon Musk, carried the first all-civilian crew on an adventure to orbit the Earth for three days.

Below, we provide links to six Times articles and Opinion pieces that connect current space research and exploration with the space race. Choose one or more stories to read, and then consider the following questions:
Essential Questions

How is the competition between Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX - as well as between the entrepreneurs - similar or different from the contest for space supremacy between two rival nations like the United States and the Soviet Union?

What economic, social and political forces, like the Cold War, are shaping the current competition for space?

How important to national or international interests is the new focus on spaceflight? How important is space exploration and development? What should NASA's role and mission be now? Should nations fight for supremacy of space and other celestial bodies?

Who do you think will "win" this latest race?

Journal Activity: You can also make some personal connections to the space race - past, present and future - by using one or more of the following prompts to inspire your thoughts, reflection and imagination:

Make personal connections: Are you excited by renewed interest in space travel? Are you fascinated by space or have you ever dreamed of becoming an astronaut? Do you think you will ever to travel to space during your lifetime? If you had an opportunity to go anywhere in space, where would you visit? To share your responses to these questions, and to reply to other students, submit a comment on our related Student Opinion prompt.

Apply the lessons from the past: Make the argument for or against the new space race:Is it good for humanity? Or is it doomed to recreate the mistakes of the past? What lessons from the historical space race can we apply today? Should companies and nations still compete for supremacy in space? Should we build a new model of cooperation and collaboration? Or, perhaps, should we invest the money here on Earth? If you have time, you might consider writing an editorial or having a classroom debate.

Make some predictions: Will humans ever live in space? If so, by what year? Do you think that you ever will?

Times Resources
To help you research the new space race you might start by looking at the Times's Space and Astronomy Topics page or some of these recent stories:

Space Race Quiz Answers: 1d, 2d, 3e, 4b, 5d

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Explore the Space Race With The New York Times's Archive

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In this extended lesson plan, students will use the Times archive to explore the questions: What was the space race? Who won it? And why did it matter? Then they will connect the past to the current competition for space.

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Globular Cluster Omega Centauri Looks Radiant in Infrared

A cluster brimming with millions of stars glistens like an iridescent opal in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Called Omega Centauri, the sparkling orb of stars is like a miniature galaxy. It is the biggest and brightest of the 150 or so similar objects, called globular clusters, that orbit around the outside of our Milky Way galaxy. Stargazers at southern latitudes can spot the stellar gem with the naked eye in the constellation Centaurus. Globular clusters are some of the oldest objects in our universe. Their stars are over 12 billion years old, and, in most cases, formed all at once when the universe was just a toddler. Omega Centauri is unusual in that its stars are of different ages and possess varying levels of metals, or elements heavier than boron. Astronomers say this points to a different origin for Omega Centauri than other globular clusters: they think it might be the core of a dwarf galaxy that was ripped apart and absorbed by our Milky Way long ago. In this new view of Omega Centauri, Spitzer's infrared observations have been combined with visible-light data from the National Science Foundation's Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Visible-light data with a wavelength of .55 microns is colored blue, 3.6-micron infrared light captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera is colored green and 24-micron infrared light taken by Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer is colored red. Where green and red overlap, the color yellow appears. Thus, the yellow and red dots are stars revealed by Spitzer. These stars, called red giants, are more evolved, larger and dustier. The stars that appear blue were spotted in both visible and 3.6-micron-, or near-, infrared light. They are less evolved, like our own sun. Some of the red spots in the picture are distant galaxies beyond our own.

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NASA.gov brings you the latest news, images and videos from America's space agency, pioneering the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.

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