60 years since NASA's first astronaut in space - A Space wrap-up on national space day.

Space is definitely one of the biggest topics and adventures of the last 60 years. From then on technological progress moves faster and faster. From the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, over the first human on the moon, Neil Armstrong, to landable rockets designed and built by SpaceX the aerospace industry discovered how to precise and optimize the technology. Also aerospace raised public interest in everything in space. Also, the next target, bringing humans to Mars, isn't that far away.

The chronicles of aerospace - a short timeline

For thousands of years, humans have been looking through the sky to space and are thinking about what is there, but the people in the past only could try to imagine and develop a picture of space. For a couple of hundred years, we have the opportunity to watch into the sky and prove some theories of the scientists of the past. One of the few benefits of the Cold War was the rapid advances in aerospace. In the time where the USA and Russia are challenging each other in every area, also the new topic “aerospace” and the related goals of bringing into space and landing a spaceship with humans on the moon gained scientific and political interest.

On the 12th of April in 1961, the Russian space agency “Roscosmos” started a rocket with the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin onboard into a low space orbit and after one hour and 48 min, the spaceship successfully landed on earth. The fact that Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space motivates the USA to invest even more in aerospace. That’s why the space agency of the USA, NASA, succeeded in bringing the first human to the moon and back to earth.

On the 21st of July in 1969 at 02:56:20 o'clock (UTC), the US American astronaut Neil Armstong made the first step on the moon with the famou8s words “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”. From then on the International Space Station (ISS) was the most important outpost in space. For a couple of years also private aerospace companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and many others are growing and developing new technologies for aerospace.

The newcomer - China enters the business

Unnoticed by the USA and Russia, China has also been able to achieve some successes with its space projects. In the last years, China developed and started its own rockets, satellites, and also a little orbital space station. After many successful projects, China failed an attempt this week, which caused an uncontrolled splashdown of a rocket in the Indian ocean. Fortunately, the rocket doesn’t crash into the earth on the mainland of Spain, Portugal, or Sardinia as some people expected. In which way this will influence China’s aerospace goals isn't clear yet.

Next Target: Mars - How NASA and SpaceX are pushing technological progress forwards

After completing their first space mission with humans on board, SpaceX is now an official partner of NASA. By combining the strengths of NASA and SpaceX they want to hit the goal of bringing the first human to Mars. Together with the chance of hitting this goal in the next one or two decades rapidly increases.