Happy Birthday - NASA Established, July 29, 1958

Happy Birthday NASA

On July 29, 1958, passage of the National Aeronautics and Space Act gave birth to NASA.

NASA's motto is: "For the benefit of all."

NASA's Office of Education motto is... "Shaping the Future: Launching New Endeavors to Inspire the Next Generation of Explorers."

Life on the Moon

Yesterday, July 28, 2008, NASA awarded 12 contracts relating to the Constellation Program:

"These studies provide new ideas to help the Constellation Program develop innovative, reliable requirements for the systems that will be used when outposts are established on the moon," said Jeff Hanley, the Constellation Program manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. [link]

Notice the word "when" in the above quote. Not "if" ...but, "when" we have outposts established on the moon.

NASA plans to establish a human outpost on the moon through a successive series of lunar missions beginning in 2020.

In addition to the Constellation Program, NASA is also working on developing lower-cost access vehicles to space, in particular the Ares and Orion programmes, and thus make access to the International Space Station (ISS) independent of Russia.

New Frontiers for Both Russia and USA

Many recall NASA being established as a response to the 1957 successful launch of the Soviet Union's artificial satellite Sputnik. While NASA continues exploring new frontiers in space, Russia continues with their own desire to break new records in science...

Russian explorers plunged to the bottom of Lake Baikal, the world's deepest lake, on Tuesday in a show of Moscow's resurgent ambitions to set new records in science. [link]

Last April U.S.A. and Russian scientists revealed that Lake Baikal, which contains more water than all the North American Great Lakes combined, had warmed faster than global air temperatures over the past 60 years. Many scientists are concerned that this could put animals unique to the lake in jeopardy.