Nasa reaches 50 with pioneer spirit lost
Nasa, the US space agency, is celebrating its 50th birthday this summer with an eclectic series of events. They range from air shows to gala dinners, from family picnics at Nasa centres to astronauts throwing ceremonial pitches at baseball games.
But sadly Nasa can offer no space spectacular to mark the anniversary of its formation in 1958 – in shocked response to the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite.
Yes, the Phoenix Lander is scratching around on the surface of Mars and may make an important discovery about the biochemistry of the red planet. Yes, more Shuttle launches are due, including a potentially perilous autumn mission to service the Hubble space telescope. But Nasa has little to offer in the near future that is likely to thrill the public. Forget about matching the excitement of the 1960s Apollo programme. There is nothing to match even the pioneering planetary missions such as the 1976 Viking landings on Mars and the Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter in the 1990s.
