The ascent stage of the Apollo 11 lunar module approaching the command module for docking before the crew returned to Earth.Image Credit: NASA. Space Shuttle Columbia, the worlds first reusable space vehicle, landing at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center (now NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center) at Edwards Air Force Base, California, April 14, 1981.Image Credit: NASA. Landing 12 people on the moon remains one of NASA's greatest achievements, if not the greatest. The station is a partnership of 15 nations through NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency. So why haven't astronauts been back to the moon in nearly 47 years? NASA selected Gemini because the word is Latin for twins, and the Gemini was a capsule built for two. Whilst manned missions to the moon have stopped, research into the moon and journeys to space still take place. Apollo 11 was followed by six further trips to the Moon, five of which landed successfully. For about 14 days at a time, the lunar surface is a boiling hellscape that is exposed directly to the sun's harsh rays; the moon has no protective atmosphere. The Apollo missions had all taken place against the backdrop of civil unrest in the US,and the large amounts of money being spent on space travel became a point of contention for the American public. Recent NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine highlighted this when he described the space race thus: This wasa contest of political ideologies. ", Peggy Whitson, an astronaut who lived in space for a total of 665 days, previously told Business Insider that the Apollo missions "had a lot of problems with dust.". He later made it to the Moon on Apollo 14. "Why would you believe what any president said about a prediction of something that was going to happen two administrations in the future?" In 2004, for example, the Bush administration tasked NASA with coming up with a way to replace the space shuttle, which was set to retire, and also return to the moon. NASAs 1978 class of astronauts also included the first African-Americans and the first Asian American. He was joined by Ronald E. Evans as command module pilot and Eugene Cernan as Mission Commander. Bridensteine describes how the future of Lunar travel is about a sustained presence on the Moon. Project Mercury, the first U.S. program to put humans in space, made 25 flights, six of which carried astronauts between 1961 and 1963. Pavel Popovich They dont go away empty handed the Orbital ATK Cygnus, JAXAs HTV, and Russian Progress ships take out the trash and burn up during reentry while the SpaceX Dragon lands in the Pacific Ocean to return science and hardware to researchers on Earth. Skylab was the first NASA managed and operated space station. The four, windmill-like solar arrays were attached to the Apollo Telescope Mount. But he did change Obama's goal of launching astronauts to an asteroid, shifting priorities to moon and Mars missions. The Space Shuttle was also instrumental in the development of the ISS. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. NASAs Artemis Program aims to return to the Moon by 2024, and set up a sustained human presence that would allow us to regularly visit our celestial neighbour. Gemini IV spacewalk, June 3, 1965. Astronauts John Young and Mike Collins carried out a three-day mission to rendezvous and dock in space with an Agena spacecraft that had lifted off 101 minutes earlier. (By contrast, the US military gets a budget of about $680 billion a year.). One of many steps in assembling the International Space Station, Space Shuttle Atlantis delivered the S0 Truss Structure (the big set of solar panels across the top of the picture), which the crew installed on top of the Destiny module. Since the sixth and final moon landing in 1972, astronauts have not left Earth's orbit. Yuri Gagarin More than 2 million people from government agencies and the aerospace industry combined their skills, initiative and experience to make the project possible. These partnerships have taught us more about the universe, improved our lives at home, and expanded the possibilities for future exploration into deep space. The main reason for this was money. But on a recent phone call with reporters, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said that ambitious goal is going to require quite a lot more federal cash, something that's historically been a political sticking point in Washington. International Space Station - 1988-present. "In fact, we would probably be on Mars.". The OneYear Mission helped identify and reduce the biomedical risks astronauts face during longer space exploration, a stepping stone to future missions to deep space. NASA spent $9 billion over five years designing, building, and testing hardware for that human-spaceflight program. Some commercial trips have been planned, which would be very short visits for lots of money, but none of those have taken off yet. ", NOW WATCH: Heres what NASA could accomplish if it had the US militarys $600 billion budget, wants to get astronauts back there by 2024, Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories, boost that to $22.6 billion in the 2020 budget, say they dream about becoming YouTube stars, rather than astronauts. I'll just see things as they come.". Observations of the Sun were one of this space lab programs primary achievements. Virgil Grissom NASA astronaut Ed White became the first American to walk in space. First Ten People Into Space (USAF definition): The programs main goals were: to test an astronauts ability to fly long duration flights (14 days); to understand how a spacecraft could rendezvous and dock with another vehicle in Earth orbit; to perfect re-entry landing methods; and to further understand the effects of longer spaceflights on astronauts. But given the ballooning costs and snowballing delays related to NASA's SLS rocket program, there may not be enough funding to make it to either destination, even if the International Space Station gets defunded early. It had a workshop, an observatory and carried out hundreds of experiments. The vast majority were astronauts with at least two years of training, but there have also been a handful of space tourists between 2001-2009, some scientists, engineers and politicians as well as a half-dozen or so Air Force pilots. "I would like the next president to support a budget that allows us to accomplish the mission that we are asked to perform, whatever that mission may be," Scott Kelly, an astronaut who spent a year in space, wrote in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" thread in January 2016, before Trump took office. "You've got to realize young people are essential to this kind of an effort," Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt recently told Business Insider. A makeshift arrangement of equipment, parts and duct tape on the Apollo 13 Lunar Module (LM) saved the crews lives after an oxygen tank explosion in the Service Module left them with the LM to use as a lifeboat. Using materials only found on the spacecraft, NASA engineers on the ground designed and tested a system that removed carbon dioxide from the LM; the Apollo 13 crew then made the system onboard, April 17, 1970, and returned safely to Earth. Buzz Aldrin said in testimony to Congress in 2015 that he believes the will to return to the moon must come from Capitol Hill. ), Total Number of People Who Have Been in Space (USAF definition) - 628, Total Number of People Who Have Been in Space (FAI definition) - 615, Total Number of People Who Have Been in Earth Orbit - 587, Ten Longest Individual Durations in Space: Valeri Polyakov - 437.749 days Sergei Avdeyev - 379.619 days Musa Manarov - 365.944 days Vladimir Titov - 365.944 days Pyotr Dubrov - 355.1568 days Mark Vande Hei - 355.1568 days Mikhail Korniyenko - 340.363 days Scott Kelly - 340.363 days Christina Koch - 328.54 days Yuri Romanenko - 326.485 days, Ten Longest Total Durations in Space: Gennadi Padalka - 878.478 days Yuri Malenchenko - 827.393 days Sergei Krikalyov - 803.403 days Aleksandr Kaleri - 769.275 days Sergei Avdeyev - 747.600 days Oleg Kononenko - 736.780 days Anton Shkaplerov - 709.337 days Valeri Polyakov - 678.690 days Fyodor Yurchikhin - 673.360 days Peggy Whitson - 666.433 days, Most Trips Into Space: 7 trips Franklin Chang-Diaz Jerry Ross 6 trips Curtis Brown Colin Foale Sergei Krikalyov Yuri Malenchenko Franklin Musgrave James Wetherbee John Young 5 trips John Blaha Kenneth Bowersox Kenneth Cockrell Bonnie Dunbar Vladimir Dzhanibekov Joseph Engle Robert Gibson John Grunsfeld James Halsell Steven Hawley Susan Helms Jeffrey Hoffman Marsha Ivins Tamara Jernigan Aleksandr Kaleri Steven Lindsey Michael Lpez-Alegra Shannon Lucid Gennadi Padalka Scott Parazynski Kent Rominger Anatoliy Solovyov Gennadi Strekalov Norman Thagard James Voss Janice Voss Fyodor Yurchikhin, Fifteen Longest Individual EVA's: Susan Helms - 8.93 hours James Voss - 8.93 hours Thomas Akers - 8.48 hours Richard Hieb - 8.48 hours Pierre Thuot - 8.48 hours Akihiko Hoshide - 8.28 hours Sunita Williams - 8.28 hours John Grunsfeld - 8.25 hours Stephen Smith - 8.25 hours Aleksandr Misurkin - 8.22 hours Anton Shkaplerov - 8.22 hours Colin Foale - 8.17 hours Claude Nicollier - 8.17 hours John Grunsfeld - 8.13 hours Stephen Smith - 8.13 hours, Ten Longest Total EVA Durations: Anatoliy Solovyov - 78.79 hours Michael Lpez-Alegra - 67.67 hours Andrew Feustel - 61.80 hours Robert Behnken - 61.17 hours Peggy Whitson - 60.35 hours Fyodor Yurchikhin - 59.48 hours Robert Kimbrough - 59.47 hours Jerry Ross - 58.63 hours John Grunsfeld - 58.50 hours Christopher Cassidy - 54.85 hours, Most EVA's: 16 EVA's Anatoliy Solovyov 10 EVA's Sergei Avdeyev Robert Behnken Christopher Cassidy Michael Lpez-Alegra Gennadi Padalka Aleksandr Serebrov Peggy Whitson 9 EVA's Nikolai Budarin Vladimir Dezhurov Andrew Feustel Edward Fincke Robert Kimbrough Richard Mastracchio Jerry Ross Fyodor Yurchikhin 8 EVA's Charles Conrad John Grunsfeld Leonid Kizim Sergei Krikalyov Talgat Musabayev Yuri Onufrienko Vladimir Solovyov John Young. The famous 'Earthrise' photo from Apollo 8, the first human mission to the Moon. But incoming presidents and lawmakers often scrap the previous leader's space-exploration priorities. Gherman Titov A circle marked each station in the worldwide tracking network. Humanity's first reusable spacecraft, the space shuttle carried people into orbit repeatedly; launched, recovered and repaired satellites; conducted cutting-edge research; and built the largest structure in space, the International Space Station. Even at the height of the Apollo program, after Aldrin and Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, only 53% of Americans said they thought the program was worth the cost. Commander Wally Schirra looking out the rendezvous window in front of the commander's station of the Apollo 7 Earth orbital mission, Oct. 19, 1968. Although we havent put a human on the lunar surface since the 1970s, there are now regular crewed missions to space. "Space out as far as geostationary orbit is part of our everyday economy. Find out more about the future of space travel. Bezos has floated a plan to start building the first moon base using Blue Origin's upcoming New Glenn rocket system. But presidents and Congress don't seem to care about staying the course. Fresh fruit and vegetables are a special treat for astronauts, so nearly every cargo resupply mission includes fresh fruit and veggiesand sometimes ice cream! ", "That's not where innovation and excitement comes from. Someday I think the moon will be, and that's something to work for.". Kibo means hope in Japanese. Stay up to date with what you want to know. The Apollo program also developed technology to meet other national interests in space, conducted scientific exploration of the Moon, and developed humanitys capability to work in the lunar environment. Most of the rest of the time, US approval of Apollo hovered below 50%. Astronaut Tom Stafford (foreground) and cosmonaut Alexei Leonov make their historic handshake in space on July 17, 1975. More EVA statistics can be found on the EVA Quick Stats page. Their goal was to see how their bodies handled that much time in space. The political tug-of-war over NASA's mission and budget isn't the only reason people haven't returned to the moon. Yet after President Barack Obama took office and the Government Accountability Office released a report about NASA's inability to estimate Constellation's cost Obama pushed to scrap the program and signed off on the SLS rocket instead. Gemini III astronauts Gus Grissom and John Young (photographed in a spacecraft simulator), crewed the first human Gemini flight, March 23, 1965. "The innovation that's been going on over the last 10 years in spaceflight never would've happened if it was just NASA and Boeing and Lockheed," Hoffman told journalists during a roundtable earlier this year. This is one of the few photos that shows Armstrong during the moonwalk. It was a 12-day mission and broke many records, the longest space walk, the longest lunar landing and the largest lunar samples brought back to Earth. It's just a matter of when. ", Visit the home of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), the Prime Meridian of the world and Londons only Planetarium, From historic clocks and telescopes to cutting edge astronomy, find all there is to see at the home of Greenwich Mean Time. The International Space Station is about 250 miles away. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.". A joint project between the USA, Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada, astronauts aboard the ISS carry out various experiments, and live on the station for about six months at a time. Because molecules and cells behave differently in space, research in microgravity helps advance scientific knowledge. More than 45 years after the most recent crewed moon landing Apollo 17 in December 1972 there are plenty of reasons to return people to Earth's giant, dusty satellite and stay there. It's only three days away. "This time when we go to the Moon we're going to stay. Valeri Bykovsky Fifty years ago, Apollo 7 transmitted the first live TV broadcast from a human U.S. spacecraft. Following that is a trip to Mars, which is likely fifteen years away. "Only twelve people have walked on the moon," Schmit said. Mercury Mission Control, Flight Control Area. Go see Discovery at the Smithsonians National Air and Space Museums Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport. Tragically, NASA lost two crews of seven in the 1986 Challenger accident and the 2003 Columbia accident. Within the next two weeks, another three astronauts will head back up there -- leaving the Space Station with its full normal load. "And we have a whole bunch of stuff we have to invent and then test in order to learn before we can go deeper out.". Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. On Jan. 27, 1967, fire swept through the Apollo 1 command module during a preflight test on the Cape Kennedy launch pad. View of Earth from Shepards Freedom 7 Mercury capsule, a view of our planet that no American had ever seen before. The next mission in the works is to explore the space between the Earth and the moon. But a bigger worry is what eons of meteorite impacts have created: regolith, also called moon dust. Its surface is littered with craters and boulders that threaten safe landings. Total Time Spent By Humans In Space - In excess of 169.2 man-years, Most people in space at one time: 14 (In September 2021 and again in April 2022.