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By NASA
The Apollo 11 mission in July 1969 completed the goal set by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth before the end of the decade. At the time, NASA planned nine more Apollo Moon landing missions of increasing complexity and an Earth orbiting experimental space station. No firm human space flight plans existed once these missions ended in the mid-1970s. After taking office in 1969, President Richard M. Nixon chartered a Space Task Group (STG) to formulate plans for the nation’s space program for the coming decades. The STG’s proposals proved overly ambitious and costly to the fiscally conservative President who chose to take no action on them.
Left: President John F. Kennedy addresses a Joint Session of Congress in May 1961. Middle: President Kennedy addresses a crowd at Rice University in Houston in September 1962. Right: President Lyndon B. Johnson addresses a crowd during a March 1968 visit to the Manned Spacecraft Center, now NASA’s Johnson Space Center, in Houston.
On May 25, 1961, before a Joint Session of Congress, President John F. Kennedy committed the United States to the goal, before the decade was out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. President Kennedy reaffirmed the commitment during an address at Rice University in Houston in September 1962. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who played a leading role in establishing NASA in 1958, under Kennedy served as the Chair of the National Aeronautics and Space Council. Johnson worked with his colleagues in Congress to ensure adequate funding for the next several years to provide NASA with the needed resources to meet that goal.
Following Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, now President Johnson continued his strong support to ensure that his predecessor’s goal of a Moon landing could be achieved by the stipulated deadline. But with increasing competition for scarce federal resources from the conflict in southeast Asia and from domestic programs, Johnson showed less interest in any space endeavors to follow the Apollo Moon landings. NASA’s annual budget peaked in 1966 and began a steady decline three years before the agency met Kennedy’s goal. From a budgetary standpoint, the prospects of a vibrant, post-Apollo space program didn’t look all that rosy, the triumphs of the Apollo missions of 1968 and 1969 notwithstanding.
Left: On March 5, 1969, President Richard M. Nixon, left, introduces Thomas O. Paine as the NASA Administrator nominee, as Vice President Spiro T. Agnew looks on. Middle: Proposed lunar landing sites through Apollo 20, per August 1969 NASA planning. Right: An illustration of the Apollo Applications Program experimental space station that later evolved into Skylab.
Less than a month after assuming the Presidency in January 1969, Richard M. Nixon appointed a Space Task Group (STG), led by Vice President Spiro T. Agnew as the Chair of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, to report back to him on options for the American space program in the post-Apollo years. Members of the STG included NASA Acting Administrator Thomas O. Paine (confirmed by the Senate as administrator on March 20), the Secretary of Defense, and the Director of the Office of Science and Technology. At the time, the only approved human space flight programs included lunar landing missions through Apollo 20 and three long-duration missions to an experimental space station based on Apollo technology that evolved into Skylab.
Beyond a general vague consensus that the United States human space flight program should continue, no approved projects existed once these missions ended by about 1975. With NASA’s intense focus on achieving the Moon landing within President Kennedy’s time frame, long-term planning for what might follow the Apollo Program garnered little attention. During a Jan. 27, 1969, meeting at NASA chaired by Acting Administrator Paine, a general consensus emerged that the next step after the Moon landing should involve the development of a 12-person earth-orbiting space station by 1975, followed by an even larger outpost capable of housing up to 100 people “with a multiplicity of capabilities.” In June, with the goal of the Moon landing almost at hand, NASA’s internal planning added the development of a space shuttle by 1977 to support the space station, the development of a lunar base by 1976, and the highly ambitious idea that the U.S. should prepare for a human mission to Mars as early as the 1980s. NASA presented these proposals to the STG for consideration in early July in a report titled “America’s Next Decades in Space.”
Left: President Richard M. Nixon, right, greets the Apollo 11 astronauts aboard the U.S.S. Hornet after their return from the Moon. Middle: The cover page of the Space Task Group (STG) Report to President Nixon. Right: Meeting in the White House to present the STG Report to President Nixon. Image credit: courtesy Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
Still bathing in the afterglow of the successful Moon landing, the STG presented its 29-page report “The Post-Apollo Space Program: Directions for the Future” to President Nixon on Sep. 15, 1969, during a meeting at the White House. In its Conclusions and Recommendations section, the report noted that the United States should pursue a balanced robotic and human space program but emphasized the importance of the latter, with a long-term goal of a human mission to Mars before the end of the 20th century. The report proposed that NASA develop new systems and technologies that emphasized commonality, reusability, and economy in its future programs. To accomplish these overall objectives, the report presented three options:
Option I – this option required more than a doubling of NASA’s budget by 1980 to enable a human Mars mission in the 1980s, establishment of a lunar orbiting space station, a 50-person Earth orbiting space station, and a lunar base. The option required a decision by 1971 on development of an Earth-to-orbit transportation system to support the space station. The option maintained a strong robotic scientific and exploration program.
Option II – this option maintained NASA’s budget at then current levels for a few years, then anticipated a gradual increase to support the parallel development of both an earth orbiting space station and an Earth-to-orbit transportation system, but deferred a Mars mission to about 1986. The option maintained a strong robotic scientific and exploration program, but smaller than in Option I.
Option III – essentially the same as Option II but deferred indefinitely the human Mars mission.
In separate letters, both Agnew and Paine recommended to President Nixon to choose Option II.
Left: Illustration of a possible space shuttle, circa 1969. Middle: Illustration of a possible 12-person space station, circa 1969. Right: An August 1969 proposed mission scenario for a human mission to Mars.
The White House released the report to the public at a press conference on Sep. 17 with Vice President Agnew and Administrator Paine in attendance. Although he publicly supported a strong human spaceflight program, enjoyed the positive press he received when photographed with Apollo astronauts, and initially sounded positive about the STG options, President Nixon ultimately chose not to act on the report’s recommendations. Nixon considered these plans too grandiose and far too expensive and relegated NASA to one America’s domestic programs without the special status it enjoyed during the 1960s. Even some of the already planned remaining Moon landing missions fell victim to the budgetary axe.
On Jan. 4, 1970, NASA had to cancel Apollo 20 since the Skylab program needed its Saturn V rocket to launch the orbital workshop. In 1968, then NASA Administrator James E. Webb had turned off the Saturn V assembly line and none remained beyond the original 15 built under contract. In September 1970, reductions in NASA’s budget forced the cancellation of two more Apollo missions, and in 1971 President Nixon considered cancelling two more. He reversed himself and they flew as Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 in 1972, the final Apollo Moon landing missions.
Left: NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher, left, and President Richard M. Nixon announce the approval to proceed with space shuttle development in 1972. Middle: First launch of the space shuttle in 1981. Right: In 1984, President Ronald W. Reagan directs NASA to build a space station.
More than two years after the STG submitted its report, in January 1972 President Nixon directed NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher to develop the Space Transportation System, the formal name for the space shuttle, the only element of the recommendations to survive the budgetary challenges. NASA anticipated the first orbital flight of the program in 1979, with the actual first flight occurring two years later. Twelve years elapsed after Nixon’s shuttle decision when President Ronald W. Reagan approved the development of a space station, the second major component of the STG recommendation. 14 years later, the first element of that program reached orbit. In those intervening years, NASA had redesigned the original American space station, leading to the development of a multinational orbiting laboratory called the International Space Station. Humans have inhabited the space station continuously for the past quarter century, conducting world class and cutting edge scientific and engineering research. Work on the space station helps enable future programs, returning humans to the Moon and later sending them on to Mars and other destinations.
The International Space Station as it appeared in 2021.
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Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 3 min read
Sols 4302-4303: West Side of Upper Gediz Vallis, From Tungsten Hills to the Next Rocky Waypoint
This photo taken by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity of ‘Balloon Dome’ covers a low dome-like structure formed by the light-toned slab-like rocks. This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera aboard Curiosity on Sol 4301 — Martian day 4,301 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Sept. 11, 2024, at 09:14:42 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024
The rover is on its way from the Tungsten Hills site to the next priority site for Gediz Vallis channel exploration, in which we plan to get in close enough for arm science to one of the numerous large dark-toned “float” blocks in the channel and also to one of the light-toned slabs. We have seen some dark blocks in the channel that seem to be related to the Stimson formation material that the rover encountered earlier in the mission, but some seem like they could be something different. We don’t think any of them originated in the channel so they have to come from somewhere higher up that the rover hasn’t been, and we’re interested in how they were transported down into the channel.
We aren’t there yet, but the 4302-4303 plan’s activities include some important longer-range characterization of the dark-toned and light-toned materials via imaging. Context for the future close-up science on the dark-toned blocks will be provided by the Mastcam mosaics named “Bakeoven Meadow” and “Balloon Dome.” The broad Balloon Dome mosaic also covers a low dome-like structure formed by the light-toned slab-like rocks (pictured). Smaller mosaics will cover a pair of targets that include contacts where other types of light-toned and dark-toned material occur next to each other in the same block: “Rattlesnake Creek” which appears to be in place, and “Casa Diablo Hot Springs,” which is a float.
The rover’s arm workspace provided an opportunity for present-day aeolian science on the sandy-looking ripple, Sandy Meadow. Mastcam stereo imaging will document the shape of the ripple, while a suite of high-resolution MAHLI images will tell us something about the particle size of the grains in it. The modern environment will also be monitored via a suprahorizon observation, a dust devil survey, and imaging of the rover deck to look for dust movement.
The workspace included small examples of the dark float blocks, so the composition of one of them will be measured by both APXS and ChemCam LIBS as targets “Lucy’s Foot Pass” and “Colt Lake” respectively.
In the meantime, the Mastcam Boneyard Meadow mosaic will provide a look back at the Tungsten Hills dark rippled block along its bedding plane to try to narrow down the origin of the ripples and the potential roles of water vs. wind in their formation.
Communication remains a challenge for the rover in this location. During planning, the rover’s drive was shifted from the second sol to the first sol in order to increase the downlink data volume available for the post-drive imaging, thereby enabling better planning at the science waypoint we expect to reach in the weekend plan. However, maintaining communications will require the rover to end its drive in a narrow range of orientations, which could make approaching our next science target a bit tricky. We’ll find out on Friday!
Written by: Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Edited by: Abigail Fraeman, Planetary Geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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The International Space Station is pictured from the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour during a fly around.NASA NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov are headed to the International Space Station for the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission in September. Once on station, these crew members will support scientific investigations that include studies of blood clotting, effects of moisture on plants grown in space, and vision changes in astronauts.
Here are details on some of the work scheduled during the Crew-9 expedition:
Blood cell development in space
Megakaryocytes Orbiting in Outer Space and Near Earth (MeF1) investigates how environmental conditions affect the development and function of megakaryocytes and platelets. Megakaryocytes, large cells found in bone marrow, and platelets, pieces of these cells, play important roles in blood clotting and immune response.
“Understanding the development and function of megakaryocytes and platelets during long-duration spaceflight is crucial to safeguarding the health of astronauts,” said Hansjorg Schwertz, principal investigator, at the University of Utah. “Sending megakaryocyte cell cultures into space offers a unique opportunity to explore their intricate differentiation process. Microgravity also may impact other blood cells, so the insights we gain are likely to enhance our overall comprehension of how spaceflight influences blood cell production.”
Results could provide critical knowledge about the risks of changes in inflammation, immune responses, and clot formation in spaceflight and on the ground.
Scanning electron-microscopy image of human platelets prior to launch to the International Space Station.University of Utah/Megakaryocytes PI Team Patches for NICER
The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) telescope on the exterior of the space station measures X-rays emitted by neutron stars and other cosmic objects to help answer questions about matter and gravity.
In May 2023, NICER developed a “light leak” that allows sunlight to interfere with daytime measurements. Special patches designed to cover some of the damage will be installed during a future spacewalk, returning the instrument to around-the-clock operation.
“This will be the fourth science observatory and first X-ray telescope in orbit to be repaired by astronauts,” said principal investigator Keith Gendreau at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “In just a year, we diagnosed the problem, designed and tested a solution, and delivered it for launch. The space station team — from managers and safety experts to engineers and astronauts — helped us make it happen. We’re looking forward to getting back to normal science operations.”
This view shows NICER’s 56 X-ray concentrators. Astronauts plan to cover some of them with special patches on a future spacewalk. NASA Vitamins for vision
Some astronauts experience vision changes, a condition called Spaceflight-Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome. The B Complex investigation tests whether a daily B vitamin supplement can prevent or mitigate this problem and assesses how genetics may influence individual response.
“We still do not know exactly what causes this syndrome, and not everyone gets it,” said Sara Zwart, principal investigator, at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Houston. “It is likely many factors, and biological variations that make some astronauts more susceptible than others.”
One such variation could be related to a metabolic pathway that requires B vitamins to function properly. Inefficiencies in this pathway can affect the inner lining of blood vessels, resulting in leaks that may contribute to vision changes. Providing B vitamins known to affect blood vessel function positively could minimize issues in genetically at-risk astronauts.
“The concept of this study is based on 13 years of flight and ground research,” Zwart said. “We are excited to finally flight test a low-risk countermeasure that could mitigate the risk on future missions, including those to Mars.”
NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei conducts a vision exam on the International Space StationNASA Watering the space garden
As people travel farther from Earth for longer, growing food becomes increasingly important. Scientists conducted many plant growth experiments on the space station using its Veggie hardware, including Veg-01B, which demonstrated that ‘Outredgeous’ red romaine lettuce is suitable for crop production in space.
Plant Habitat-07 uses this lettuce to examine how moisture conditions affect the nutritional quality and microbial safety of plants. The Advanced Plant Habitat controls humidity, temperature, air, light, and soil moisture, creating the precise conditions needed for the experiment.
Using a plant known to grow well in space removes a challenging variable from the equation, explained Chad Vanden Bosch, principal investigator at Redwire, and this lettuce also has been proven to be safe to consume when grown in space.
“For crews building a base on the Moon or Mars, tending to plants may be low on their list of responsibilities, so plant growth systems need to be automated,” Bosch said. “Such systems may not always provide the perfect growing conditions, though, so we need to know if plants grown in suboptimal conditions are safe to consume.”
This preflight image shows lettuce grown under control (left) and flood (right) moisture treatments. Plant Habitat-07 team Melissa Gaskill
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By NASA
NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, announced Wednesday it will continue its historic in-space autonomous systems payload mission aboard an orbiting satellite through a follow-on agreement with Sidus Space, Inc.
“We are excited to report the historic ASTRA (Autonomous Satellite Technology for Resilient Applications) mission will continue,” said Chris Carmichael, chief, Stennis Autonomous Systems Laboratory (ASL) branch at NASA Stennis. “We look forward to working with Sidus Space to demonstrate the capabilities of the NASA Stennis payload and our autonomous systems team.”
With this new agreement, the ASTRA payload will be used to collect onboard data on satellite systems and support management of the satellite’s Electrical Power System (EPS). The NASA Stennis ASTRA system will monitor and autonomously optimize the satellite’s battery system, ensuring the satellite continues to operate as needed for the course of its remaining mission lifetime. The ASTRA EPS management capability provides a new, innovative level of adaptability and efficiency for monitoring the satellite’s ongoing operations.
Developed by NASA Stennis to fly and demonstrate an autonomous systems hardware/software payload, ASTRA is the on-orbit mission. The NASA Stennis ASTRA technology demonstrator is a payload rider aboard the Sidus Space LizzieSat-1 (LS-1) small satellite. Partner Sidus Space is responsible for all LS-1 mission operations, including launch and satellite activation.
The LS-1 small satellite launched into space on the SpaceX Transporter 10 rideshare mission March 4 and deployed the same day. Following payload activation by Sidus Space, the NASA Stennis team worked with the company to establish a telemetry link to send and receive data in the ASTRA Payload Operation Command Center located at the NASA site. The ASL team continued to checkout and verify operation of ASTRA, confirming in early July that ASTRA primary mission objectives were successful.
The team is now focused on demonstrating autonomous system management as part of the LS-1 satellite’s planned four-year mission. “We are excited about the opportunity to continue this unprecedented mission,” Carmichael said. “Every step helps advance our autonomous systems work and lays a foundation for continued development and success.”
The NASA Stennis ASL team works to create safe-by-design autonomous systems. NASA’s ASTRA demonstrates technology that is required by NASA and industry for upcoming space missions. The ASTRA computer on the satellite runs a digital twin of key satellite systems, which identifies anomalies, and autonomously generates plans to resolve those issues.
The ongoing success of the ASTRA mission comes as NASA Stennis moves forward with strategic plans to design autonomous systems that will help accelerate development of intelligent aerospace systems and services for government and industry.
For information about NASA’s Stennis Space Center, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/stennis
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