Reaching for the Stars(and Beyond?)

by Victoria McGraw

The very last time that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) went to space was on July 8th, 2011. The space shuttle had four members on board and brought equipment and other supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). This trip took a long time and the members came back 13 days later on July 21st. Before this and somewhat afterward, there has been a huge conspiracy theory that the moon landing on July 20th, 1969, was real or fake. Many people believe that the moon landing was to just beat Russia’s space crew to the moon and others believe that this was a huge discovery in America. On March 23th, 2022, five passengers and an honorary guest, Pete Davidson, a comedian, and actor, planned to head to space on Blue Origin which is also founded by Jeff Bezos. This was a huge step because Davidson is a well-known comedian on Saturday Night Live (SNL) and with the conspiracy theory of the U.S, this can prove to a lot of people that the moon landing could most definitely be real. But the date changed to leave earth on March 29th, 2022, unfortunately, Davidson has a busy schedule and can’t make the time to go to space. Celebrities tend to go to space or consider going to space because of their own simple interests and resources. Many celebrities already have been to space and have first dibs on some future rockets in the making, such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Justin Bieber, and even Ashton Kutcher. NASA has planned to launch on August 29th, 2022, and September 3rd, however, these launches were canceled due to Hurricane Ian. One of the next launches will be November 14th, this will be the first integrated test of NASA’s deep space exploration systems. This mission (Orion) will let the astronauts stay in space longer and come home faster than ever before. Overall, space has led many high-tech and scientific advances that provide to our society, such as health, energy: environment: transportation, and information technology.