Sputnik's 50th Birthday Brings New Space Opportunities

October 4th 1957 was the day when the first artificial Russian satellite Sputnik was launched into space. Later on after 12 years American astronauts lead to the first moonwalk.

After 50 years of sputnik's launch into space, scientists and engineers are tasked with determining the future direction of space exploration. The United States and Soviet Union, once rivals on the space frontier, are now partners in the International Space Station. cooperation in international space science and human spaceflight has been firmly established its roots.

To ramp up the scientific discussions and increase publics interest in the advances that have been made in the last fifty years, as well as to plan for the next fifty years, the Space Studies Board is holding an international public seminar series on future of space-science. Lectures are going to be held across the United States and in France on topics ranging from climate change to extraterrestrial life to the International Space Station.

Look into future of space science, NASA's Beyond Einstein program, is a series of missions thats going to use the universe as a laboratory for testing our understanding of nature’s fundamental physical laws. Scientists resarching into key areas such as gravitational waves,dark energy, and black holes will lead us to the next great discoveries in Astronomy and physics. The new National Research Council report NASA's Beyond Einstein Program: An Architecture for Implementation recommends that the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM) should be made the first priority among the Beyond Einstein mission areas, due to current technological readiness and the scientific gains that could be achieved from a mission.