"This is one small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind."
That was the famous sentence uttered by Neil Armstrong, cosmonaut and the first man who succeeded in landing on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, as part of the "Apollo 11" mission of the American space agency - NASA.
This event was broadcast live by televisions around the world, including TV Belgrade, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as its full name reads, managed to overtake the Soviets in the so-called "space race".
"NASA is responsible for unique scientific and technological achievements in manned spaceflight, aeronautics, science, and space projects that have had a broad impact on our nation and the world." it says on the website of the American space agency.
In the decades that followed, NASA had a series of successful missions and projects, from the launch of America's first space station, space shuttles and satellites, through researching the planets of the solar system and sending robots to their surface, to cooperation with the Russians and the development of modern space telescopes.
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Establishment and friction
In the middle of the Cold War, a period of strained relations between the great powers - primarily the Soviet Union and the United States of America (USA), the race for supremacy was conducted in various fields, even outside the borders of the Earth, in the cosmos.
The Soviets took the lead in space cross-country by launching the artificial satellite Sputnik I into Earth's orbit on October 4, 1957, and then Sputnik II with the first animal in space, the dog Laika, on November 3.
A response soon followed from the other side of the Iron Curtain, to the so-called "Sputnik crisis", which awakened Americans' fear for their own security.
After several months of consultation with associates and consideration of the offered options, US President Dwight Eisenhower signed on July 29, 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act, which officially formed NASA.
This act is, according to the American magazine Time, was supposed to "provide research on the problems of flying inside and outside the earth's atmosphere", but to serve "also for other purposes".
One of those purposes was, they add, "overcoming inter-service rivalries that were disrupting the US rocket and space programs."
Before NASA, various military structures were involved in the research of certain parts of the universe, so it was considered that with its establishment, as well as the Military Research Agency (Darpa), this "bureaucratic nightmare was overcome".
However, there was short-lived friction between senior NASA and military officials, particularly over the military's Redstone Arsenal, where missiles were manufactured, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Los Angeles, which was also supported by the military.
In the end, NASA secured supremacy in American space exploration, and there were no further conflicts on this issue.
The US space agency officially began work on October 1, 1958.
NASA is the successor to the National Advisory Board for Aeronautics (NACA), of which he was one of the founders Serbian scientist Mihajlo Pupin in 1915, as evidenced by the existing photographs on the website of the American space agency.
Apollo 11 and the bright side of the moon
At the beginning of the sixties, the Soviet Union was still leading in the "space race", and it gained an enviable advantage on April 12, 1961, when Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly into space, in a spaceship named Vostok-1.
Already in May of the same year, US President John F. Kennedy outlined a new national goal that will be implemented within the existing NASA Apollo program - by the end of the decade, "to land on the moon with a crew and return to Earth."
This goal was achieved within the mission Apollo 11 featuring Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins.
Three cosmonauts set off on July 16, 1969, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on the famous Saturn 5 rocket to the Earth's natural satellite.
Four days later, the first manned spacecraft landed on the moon.
Neil Armstrong was the first to step onto the surface of the moon, and Buzz Aldrin joined him twenty minutes later.
The third crew member, Michael Collins, remained in the command module "Columbia", orbiting the moon.
Two cosmonauts spent time on the surface of the moon 21 hour and 36 minutes and during that time they managed to set up television cameras so that millions of people around the world could watch this historic event, they also spoke with the American president Richard Nixon by telephone and raised the US flag.
They also photographed the terrain and collected about 21,5 kilograms of material that they took to the lunar module "Eagle" - the spacecraft that brought them down and then returned them to the command module.
After a flight that lasted a total of 195 hours, 18 minutes and 35 seconds in space the size of a larger car, with a delay of about half an hour, the command module landed in the Pacific Ocean, twenty kilometers from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet.
The astronauts were transported by helicopter to the vessel where they were examined and then admitted to quarantine where they spent three weeks.
Even after more than half a century since the landing on the moon, supporters of conspiracy theories do not believe in this achievement, while five percent of Americans are convinced that the event was faked, according to polls by experts of the US space agency.
One of the main pieces of evidence offered by conspiracy theorists is the supposed flying of the American flag in airless space.
Scientists they claim that the flag was crumpled by Armstrong and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin by using force to place the pole on the ground, and that it has retained its shape because gravity on the moon is six times weaker than on Earth.
Another conspiracy theory that is often mentioned is Buzz Aldrin's footprint, which is impossible to leave on the moon due to the lack of moisture.
Mark Robinson, a professor at Arizona State University, he says that the lunar soil is covered with a loose layer of rocks and dust called "regolith", in which it is easy to leave footprints.
Since there is no atmosphere on the moon, and therefore no wind, the footprints will remain there for millions of years, the professor points out.
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The cosmic connection between Serbia and NASA
Although he was the first, Mihajlo Pupin was not the only Serb associated with the American space agency.
For example, the "Serbian Seven" team, made up of Americans of Serbian origin, participated in the historic project of landing on the moon.
They were Milojko Majk Vučelić, Slavoljub Sem Vujić, Miloš Šurbatović, Danilo Bojić, Pol Dujić, Piter Galović and Dejvid Vujić - who is about it in 2019 spoke in the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Milojko Majk Vučelić had a notable role in other missions as well, especially in 1970 during the rescue of the astronaut "Apollo 13" who called him with the famous sentence "Houston, we have a problem".
Read more about his work in the BBC story in Serbian.
For this feat, Richard Nixon awarded him America's highest civilian honor - Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Astronauts from the crew of Apollo 11 - Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin Buzz Aldrin, a few months after returning from space, in October 1969, visited Belgrade and on that occasion presented the President of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito pebbles from the moon.
Fragments of lunar soil are kept today in Museum of Yugoslavia.
At the beginning of last year, as part of the Mars research program, NASA landed a rover named "Perseverance" on the ground of the "red planet", that is, in its Jezero crater.
A woman from Belgrade also participated in this project Dragana Perković - Martin, who had worked in the Nasa team for 13 years until then.
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The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and Soviet-American Cooperation
Although it seemed otherwise, while the space race was going on, there were efforts to achieve cooperation between the two cosmic powers, primarily around the exchange of scientific data.
Back in 1963, American President John F. Kennedy proposed joint space missions, and in 1967 and 1968, the two countries signed agreements that would enable the joint rescue of cosmonauts and the return of space objects to their country of origin.
In early 1971, the US proposed a joint mission to test the docking hardware that had already been designed, and the Soviets agreed.
Thus, the path was paved for the first international manned mission, officially called the Apollo-Soyuz test project, which the Americans and the Soviets would jointly implement a few years later.
Negotiations lasted two years in both countries, and the goal was to connect the American Apollo spacecraft with the Soviet Soyuz in space.
The project was formalized by the "Agreement on Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes", which was signed during the Strategic Arms Limitation Negotiations (SALT) between the USA and the USSR in 1972.
The mission has begun July 15, 1975 with the launch of the Soviet Soyuz from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and seven hours later the American Apollo from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The merging of the aircraft took place on July 17, and as a symbol of détente - the improvement of relations between the two superpowers during the Cold War, there was also a handshake in space between the American astronaut Thomas Stafford and his Soviet colleague Alexei Leonov.
Although it seemed that this was the beginning of international cooperation, the next joint flight of American and Russian astronauts would take place only in 1994.
The largest and most expensive telescope
In cooperation with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, NASA is late last year launched into space the largest space telescope made so far, worth 10 billion dollars (9,8 billion euros).
It is named after James Webb, after one of the architects of the Apollo moon landing, and is also the heir to the famous Hubble telescope.
The first photos of the "cosmic dance" and "stellar nativity scene" captured by this marvel of science, which shows the universe in color, were recently released.
The James Webb Telescope does all kinds of sky-watching, but it has two overarching goals.
One is to take pictures of the first stars that shone in the universe more than 13,5 billion years ago, and the other is to examine distant planets to see if they might be habitable.
The first photos are just a preview of what will be seen later, says Professor Jillian Wright, who pointed out one of the telescope's four infrared instruments.
"Whenever you look at the sky in a new way, you'll see things you didn't expect," she said.
"The fact that the new data is so good, that it is of very good quality and that we got it after a few hours of observation, it speaks to the discoveries that we will make."
During the briefing at the White House, the first image taken by this telescope was shown to the US President Joseph Biden.
"We can see possibilities that no one has seen before. We can go places no one has gone before," he said.
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