NASA Then Vs Now | Unveiled

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NASA Then vs. Now</h4>

Decades after its creation in the late 1950s, NASA remains one of the most respected and celebrated scientific organizations humankind has ever seen. It’s always been at the cutting edge of many of the most exciting discoveries our species has made. But is modern NASA just a shadow of its former self?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re taking a closer look at NASA: then versus now.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration as we know it today was officially established in 1958, though its roots go back much further. A body like NASA, responsible for aviation research, called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, was founded more than a hundred years ago in 1915. Air combat became crucial in the Second World War, making NACA an invaluable resource. But everything changed, not just for NASA, but for the entire world in 1957. In October of that year, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, and fears began to grow about what Soviet domination in space would mean for the world. The following year, NASA was born, and straight away it got to work playing catch-up with the USSR’s fledgling space program.

Undoubtedly, the 1960s were when NASA reached its height – not bad for an agency that only began life at the very end of the 1950s. The Cold War was raging, with the US and USSR racing to build the biggest nuclear bombs and the biggest rockets to launch their warheads. Space was a public way to compete and show just how powerful these rockets were, and in 1962, President John F. Kennedy made his famous speech announcing that America’s intention was to put the first humans on the moon. Although the Soviets won more space landmarks, like the first space station and first human in orbit, the United States ultimately won the Space Race. NASA’s spending was at its height in 1966, three years before Apollo 11’s ground-breaking success, and you’d have been forgiven for thinking at the time that this budget would only go up. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and as yet, NASA hasn’t reached the lofty heights of the late 1960s again. Following the death of the visionary engineer Sergei Korolev in 1966, the Soviet space program floundered. America could go to the moon, but the competition had become less urgent, and world leaders were working to end the Cold War. In 1972, Apollo 17 was launched, which was to be the final crewed lunar mission for many, many decades.

But what was it like to be a part of NASA, or to live in the United States in general, during those exciting years? The 1960s were a decade where everything changed for so many people. In space, in particular, we went from just barely being able to put someone in orbit to sending astronauts all the way to the moon, over 200,000 miles away, and bringing them back safely. Astronauts and engineers who worked on the Apollo program have said that in stark contrast to today, money was no object for NASA back then. Whatever NASA needed, no matter the cost, it was given, allowing huge freedom for its engineers to troubleshoot and problem-solve without worrying about budgets and balances. Because nobody had gone to the moon before, to an extent the engineers had to make it up as they went along. They were constantly coming up with novel ways to solve problems that nobody else in history had encountered before, and working at breakneck speed all the while. According to the engineer Glenn A. Robinson, many worked seven days a week, coming together in what he dubs the “Apollo Spirit”. While the names of the astronauts are the ones the public remembers, NASA’s ranks were full of unsung heroes - including the engineers, technicians, and mathematicians who worked behind the scenes. The 2016 movie “Hidden Figures” was a watershed moment for NASA history buffs, depicting the Black, female mathematicians who did the complex calculations that ensured the success of NASA’s missions. If you were a scientist, NASA was THE place to be, and the achievements of the Apollo program are difficult to understate.

Today, in a lot of ways, NASA actually hasn’t changed. It still wants to break down barriers to get people from all walks of life into STEM. It’s still at the bleeding edge of science. And it’s still a dream job for most of those who work there. But a lot has happened between 1969 and the present day to change NASA, and not all of it good. Sadly, plenty of people involved in space research have lost their lives - not just astronauts, but engineers involved in tragic and avoidable accidents that weren’t well publicized at the time or since. Though NASA’s funding was curbed in the early 70s, public perception of the organization changed dramatically in 1986, following the catastrophic Challenger disaster, in which all 7 crew members died. It was a horrible event witnessed live around the world, and was one of the first major blows against America’s Space Shuttle program. Nearly 20 years later, in 2003, history repeated itself: the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry due to damage during launch. In 2011, the final Space Shuttle mission was conducted, which meant that the Russian Soyuz spacecraft became the only one available to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. And even the ISS, despite being a massive testament to human engineering, isn’t a product of NASA alone, and is now operated jointly by five international space agencies. NASA’s unrivaled superiority has, over the years, been challenged. 

NASA is today struggling for other reasons, too; public interest in space is arguably waning, and many young children nowadays perhaps dream of being social media stars before they dream of being astronauts or engineers. There’s also a growing distrust of NASA in some corners; as conspiracy theories gain more attention and popularity, some people have begun to believe that NASA is hiding all sorts of things – and, of course, there’s the longstanding conspiracy that NASA never went to the moon at all.

But it’s not all doom and gloom for the world’s biggest space agency, or for space research in general. If NASA’s own projects do come to fruition, then humanity certainly has a bright future ahead. For starters, the Artemis program is fully underway, and is still aiming for 2024 as the year humans will return to the moon (although just for a flyby, with a landing in 2025). It’s hoped that Artemis can renew interest in space travel and encourage a new generation of science-minded kids who want to go into the field. Part of Artemis also involves the Lunar Gateway, a permanent space station orbiting the moon – the first in history. With the Gateway, it’ll be easier than ever to get people to the moon and back, and even to send them down to the surface in person. The entire Artemis program is then touted by NASA as a stepping-stone to Mars, as sending humans to Mars remains a goal that every space company covets. The Gateway could also lead to space bases located physically on the moon instead of just orbiting it, which will teach us a lot about how to build similar habitats and space stations, again, on Mars.

NASA has plenty of other interesting missions scheduled, too. In September 2022, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test was carried out. Known as “DART”, the craft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos on purpose, successfully deflecting it. Dimorphos certainly wasn’t on its way to crash into Earth, but the test proved that hitting an asteroid with a big enough object CAN knock it off course and potentially save us from an impact event. Still just in the realm of asteroids, NASA is also planning to launch a probe to look at the space rock 16 Psyche, an M-type asteroid so rich in resources it might be worth quintillions of dollars. If space mining is to become big business, then NASA is aiming to lead the way. It has its sights set on places beyond the asteroid belt, as well. By the end of the 2020s, NASA will have launched Dragonfly, a spacecraft being sent to Saturn’s moon Titan, in order to see whether maybe, some day, this particular far-off world could be another home for humanity. For all that NASA has seemingly lost, then, there’s still huge reason to remain optimistic.

But, what do you think? Can NASA ever return to the glory days of the 1960s? Will mass interest in space hit those heights again? Or has the Agency inescapably fallen behind the times? Let us know your views in the comments!

For now, NASA holds, and probably always will hold, a special place in the public consciousness, as a vanguard in science and space exploration. The more we all care about outer space, the better chance it has of exploring it in the modern day. The more we all need outer space, the more likely it is that NASA will continue and re-emerge as a leading light for humanity. Then versus now, it hasn’t always been a smooth ride. There have been huge ups and terrible downs. But it’s a journey that will continue into the future.