Today was the start of World Space Week.

Friday seems like the wrong day to start a week of commemoration, but October 4 is a significant date in Space history.

Sputnik was launched on October 4, 1957.

Above is a clipping from the newspaper that was pasted in one of my Grandma’s Scrapbooks.

She also wrote some of her own thoughts in the scrapbook:

This “moon” had an odd beep it came in over the radio several times. It was very high pitched on a very even beep. This radio of ours is a combination battery and electric portable. Went over several times. The Queen Elizabeth and her husband from England made a flying trip over and the U.S. President conferred with them. Her diplomat came over later. Everyone in high politics are worried about all this.

It was not long before men were being launched into space.

The caption above came from an article my Grandma saved about The Mercury 7.

The first of the Mercury 7 to fly into space was Alan Shepard. In May of 1961 he flew in Freedom 7 which made the first sub-orbital flight.

John Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth in February of 1962 in Friendship 7.

The Gemini program then helped prepare the US space program for the next big goal.

The moon was the next big goal, and Apollo 11 fulfilled that goal.

After the moon landings was the brief Skylab program with three crews spending time on a space station in orbit.

Then came the Shuttle program which I was really excited about when I was in school.

Unfortunately there were several major tragedies in the Shuttle program. I have vivid memories of the Challenger Disaster.

During the Shuttle program the International Space Station was built and today we continue to have a presence in space.

Of course the manned space programs are not the only space exploration that is taking place. There are many unmanned missions in progress and telescopes are continually looking outward into space and exploring what is around us.

Hmm, this post wandered a bit from what I originally planned on writing. But, this just makes me think of exploration. We sometimes just have to follow our thoughts to discover things that we normally wouldn’t.

Steven