By Pat Reber Jul 20, 2006, 16:11 GMT
Washington - Two major characters in US space exploration celebrated birthdays this week: John Glenn, the first US astronaut to orbit the earth, turned 85; and the Viking 1 lander celebrated its 30th anniversary since touching down on Mars, the first successful mission to the red planet.
Viking 2 on Mars. Photo Credit: NASA
Glenn turned 85 on Tuesday, a day after the six-person crew aboard the Discovery shuttle returned safely to Earth from its latest mission to the International Space Station. Glenn is also the oldest astronaut ever in space, having flown at age 77 on a Discovery shuttle mission in 1998.
The shuttle is a far cry from the cramped, one-person Mercury Friendship-7 that carried Glenn - a pilot veteran of World War II and the Korean War - into orbit for nearly five hours in 1962. That was a catch-up year for the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), which was hustling to match the Soviet space programme, a Cold War race won by Moscow when they launched cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1 a year earlier.
Even in the race for Mars, the Russians won, landing their unmanned Mars 3 in 1971 on the surface of the red planet. But the craft lost communication with Earth seconds later.
NASA's Viking 1 followed five years later, touching down on Mars on July 20, 1976, triumphing over the Russian craft by sending back the very first detailed photographs from the surface of one of Earth's nearest neighbours and opening a new eye-popping chapter in space exploration.
Viking 1 and its sister craft, Viking 2, which landed just weeks later in September 1976, outlived their intended three-month stay by more than six years, sending home 4,500 images and mapping 97 per cent of the planet.
Since the end of the Cold War in 1990, Russia and the United States have cooperated in space, carrying the load of building the International Space Station (ISS) that orbits the Earth. Russian Soyuz craft have buttressed the heavy lifting capacity of the US shuttles, grounded off and on by disaster and technical glitches.
Despite the cooperation between former political rivals, the US is still looking over its shoulder at potential space rivals like China, which has a fledgling programme of its own.
US President George W Bush wants to hurry up and finish the ISS construction so the United States can turn its full attention - and the 4 billion dollars it spends every year maintaining the aging, 25- year-old shuttles - to building a launch base on the moon for human travel to Mars.
NASA administrator Mike Griffin recently summed up the pressure the White House feels about the space race, where Washington fears setbacks could erode America's standing as the world's dominant political and economic force.
'Imagine if you will a world of some future time - whether it be 2020 or 2040 or whenever - when some other nations or alliances are capable of reaching and exploring the moon, or voyaging to Mars, and the United States cannot and does not,' Griffin told Congress in April.
'Is it even conceivable that in such a world America would still be regarded as a leader among nations, never mind THE leader?' he said. 'And if not, what might be the consequences of this for the global balance of economic and strategic power?'
John Glenn used his hero status as a launch pad for a successful business and later political career, where he served nearly 25 years as the US Senator from Ohio. He still keeps his hand in the political pot, with an institute for public service named after him at the University of Ohio.
Glenn's intent was to inspire young people to become engaged in politics and public service - a path that he himself laid down with his own life.
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