Speeches/Op-Ed 2008
NASA at 50: a Half Century of Transatlantic Cooperation in Space.
Ouest France, July 29, 2008
On July 29, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, the law that brought NASA into existence. Drafted quickly in the turbulent period that followed a string of successes in space by the Soviet Union, and the very public failures of initial U.S. space efforts, the Act is remarkable in many ways. Perhaps most notable, it entrusted the management of the U.S. space program to a civilian agency ensuring that the program would be open to public scrutiny. This also facilitated a remarkable commitment to international cooperation. In fact, the very first line of the Space Act emphasized that our activities in space would be “for the benefit of all mankind.”
The U.S. and its international partners have garnered many successes in space over the last fifty years, The Moon landings of the 1960s, the Space Shuttle flights over the last 27 years and the stunning discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope spring readily to mind.
The accomplishments include advances in communications, weather forecasting, electronics and countless other fields – aspects of modern life unimaginable without the knowledge acquired from space exploration.
France, both bilaterally and through the European Space Agency (ESA), has long been one of our closest partners. The Hubble Space Telescope is a joint NASA-ESA project, as as will be its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope. When the U.S. Phoenix spacecraft landed near the Martian North Pole in May, European spacecraft in orbit around Mars served as a back-up station to relay data. The Jason-2 mission launched on June 20 is a collaborative mission between two U.S. agencies, and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatailes (CNES). Jason-2 continues the important Franco-American studies of global sea levels and Earth’s climate begun in 1992 with the Franco-American Topex/Poseidon mission.
The most visible embodiment of cooperation in space is the International Space Station (ISS), a partnership between NASA, ESA, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, and the Russian Federal Space Agency. After many years of international effort, the full potential of the ISS is finally being realized. Earlier this year the European Columbus laboratory was brought to the ISS by the Space Shuttle. The crew of that Mission included French Astronaut Léopold Eyharts, who spent over six weeks on the ISS activating the Columbus laboratory and conducting experiments. The Jules Verne, Europe’s first Automated Transfer Vehicle managed by the CNES Control Center in Toulouse, arrived at the ISS in April carrying tons of cargo and fuel. Later this month, the five partner agencies will meet in Paris to review progress and finalize plans to double the size of the ISS crew to six next year.
In the spirit of the Space Act of 1958, President Bush announced that the U.S. will implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and beyond, in open cooperation with like-minded international partners. Robotic probes from NASA and other space agencies are already unraveling the secrets of Mars; others are winging their way to the very edges of our solar system to explore Mercury and Pluto. Using experience gained at the International Space Station, the U.S. will continue to improve our technologies and skills for human missions to the Moon, and then to Mars. Other countries, especially our long-standing European partners in space exploration, share these aspirations.
Where will the next fifty years take us? Americans will continue to explore space in order to understand our own planet, to improve our lives and to attempt to grasp our place in the universe. Following the path NASA began a half century ago, we will take this journey together with our partners for the benefit of all humanity. And given the history of our collaboration, we may one day see French and American crews working together on the Moon and on Mars.