impact made a cloud of dust. Space telescopes and telescopes on Earth all collected data
after the impact. The Stardust mission collected tiny dust particles from another comet.
Missions are currently underway to study some of the larger asteroids and Pluto. Studies of
smaller objects in the solar system may help us to understand how the solar system formed.
Future Missions
In 2004, President Bush proposed a “new vision for space exploration.” He set the goal of
putting humans on the Moon again by 2020. Unlike the Apollo missions, however, Bush
proposed that reaching the Moon would only be the beginning. He also proposed building a
permanent station on the Moon, which could serve as a base for missions taking humans to
Mars and beyond. He announced that the space shuttle program would be retired after the
International Space Station was complete (around 2010). A new kind of space vehicle, now
called Orion, will be developed to take humans to space.
President Bush also explained we would meet these goals cooperatively, more like the Inter-
national Space Station than the missions during the Space Race. He said, “We’ll invite other
nations to share the challenges and opportunities of this new era of discovery. The vision I
outline today is a journey, not a race, and I call on other nations to join us on this journey,
in a spirit of cooperation and friendship.” Meanwhile, China, Russia, and Japan have all said
they are planning to send humans to the Moon and establish Moon bases of their own.
Lesson Summary
- The Soviet Union put seven Salyut space stations into orbit between 1971 and 1982.
- The United States’ first space station was Skylab. Skylab was in orbit from 1973 to
1979. - The Soviet (later Russian) space station Mir was the first modular space station. Both
Russian and American crews lived on Mir. - The International Space Station is a huge project that involves many countries. It is
still being assembled. - Space shuttles are reusable vehicles for American astronauts to get into space. A space
shuttle takes off like a rocket and lands like a glider plane. - The space shuttle program has had two major disasters—the Challenger disaster in
1986 and the Columbia disaster in 2003. In each case, the spacecraft was destroyed
and a crew of 7 people died. - Recent space missions have mostly used small spacecraft, such as satellites and space
probes, without crews. - The United States plans to send humans to the Moon again by 2020, build a base on
the Moon, then send humans to Mars.