NASA Celebrates Past While Facing Unsure Future

27 February 2012

John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth

BARBARA KLEIN: This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English. I’m Barbara Klein.

BOB DOUGHTY: And I’m Bob Doughty. Today, we remember a major anniversary for the American space program. And we tell how budget cuts may affect American plans to explore the planet Mars. We also tell about efforts to organize competing uses for coastal waters. And we tell what scientists have learned about the healing powers of massage.

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BARBARA KLEIN: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration celebrated a major anniversary earlier this month. It was fifty years ago that an American astronaut first orbited the Earth. John Glenn made history on February twentieth, nineteen sixty-two. He became a hero to millions of Americans.

Just seven years after that flight, NASA reached all the way to the moon. The world watched and listened as astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon.

That was nineteen-sixty-nine. Now, a huge national debt has forced the federal government - and the American people – to set lower expectations. This month, the Obama administration proposed cuts in many federal programs. NASA did not escape the budget cuts.

BOB DOUGHTY: Astronaut Cady Coleman has been to space three times. Last year, she spent nearly six months on the International Space Station. Even with the threat of cuts, she believes the American space agency can do great work.