Nasa lagging in space race

– Sixty years ago, spurred by competition with the Soviet Union, the United States created Nasa, launching a journey that would take Americans to the moon within a decade.

Since then, the US space agency has seen glorious achievements and crushing failures in its drive to push the frontiers of space exploration, including a fatal launch pad fire in 1967 that killed three and two deadly shuttle explosions, in 1986 and 2003, that took 14 lives.

Now, Nasa is struggling to redefine itself in an increasingly crowded field of international space agencies and commercial interests, with its sights set on returning to deep space.

These bold goals make for soaring rhetoric, but experts worry the cash just isn’t there to meet the timelines of reaching the moon in the next decade and Mars by the 2030s.

And Nasa’s inability to send astronauts to space – a capacity lost in 2011 when the space shuttle programme ended, as planned, after 30 years – is a lasting blemish on the agency’s stellar image.

While US private industries toil on new crew spaceships, Nasa still must pay Russia $80 million per seat for US astronauts to ride to space on a Soyuz capsule.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into space with Sputnik 1, while US attempts were failing miserably.

The US government was already working on reaching space, but mainly under the guise of the military.

President Dwight D Eisenhower appealed to Congress to create a separate, civilian space agency and he signed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorisation Act into law on July 29, 1958.

Nasa opened its doors in October 1958, with about 8 000 employees and a budget of $100 million.

The Soviets won another key part of the space race in April 1961 when Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth.

A month later, John F Kennedy unveiled plans to land a man on the moon by decade’s end.

“No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish,” the US president said. And the Apollo programme was born.

In 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. In 1969, Nasa astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. – AFP

While US industries toil on new crew spaceships, Nasa still must pay Russia $80 million per seat for US astronauts to ride to space on a Soyuz capsule.