Keynote Presentation – NASA: 60 Years and Counting…

Overview:

Sputnik launched on 4 Oct 1057. On July 29, 1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, the creation of NASA. The Soviets launched the first human into orbit, Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961. On 5 May 1961, Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 Mercury capsule lifted off at 9:34 a.m. from Launch Complex 5 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and flew a suborbital trajectory lasting 15 minutes and 22 seconds, America’s first man in space. On 25 May 1961, Kennedy delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress. In that speech, he stated “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” The rest, as they say, is history.

Today, NASA is working on many fronts to advance man’s presence in space. The International Space Station in some form has been in orbit now for nearly 20 years. NASA has multiple partners in the commercial sector under the Commercial Crew Program. Boeing and SpaceX are the primary partners, with Sierra Nevada Corporation, Blue Origin, and others also playing a role. The Orion Program, together with the Space launch System (SLS) Program, is moving closer to the next experimental flight, EM-1, preparatory to the first manned mission, EM-2. NASA’s Exploration Campaign, the next step in human spaceflight, will establish U.S. preeminence in cislunar space through the operations and the deployment of a U.S.-led Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOPG). Together with the Orion and SLS Programs, the LOPG is central to advancing and sustaining human space exploration goals, and is the unifying single stepping off point for human cislunar operations, lunar surface access and missions to Mars. As one might expect, EMC for all this activity is challenging, to say the least. In the next half-hour or so, I will talk about some of those challenges and how the different programs are meeting them.