Since the first space launch, humans have dreamed of exploring the Universe – pushing the boundaries of the known and expanding scientific and technical knowledge. National governments and private companies have invested billions in space exploration. They’ve developed the Curiosity Mars rover and the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and its moons, built major space observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope, and launched more than 5,000 missions to gather information about planets, stars, and other objects in our Solar System and beyond.
These missions have produced dramatic achievements, but also important lessons. The first, most obvious lesson is that there are a lot of risks involved in spaceflight. The most serious is the risk to human lives, but there are also other risks: radiation, extreme temperatures, and high-speed impacts, to name just a few. These risks can be managed with advanced technology. They can even be reduced through the use of autonomous robots and the rethinking of some aspects of human spaceflight, such as how astronauts are trained to deal with these challenges.
Another lesson is that there’s a payoff for government spending on space exploration. Money spent on space exploration translates into jobs in highly skilled fields and leads to technological advances with real-world applications. It helps address critical global issues, such as climate change and natural disasters, and it provides food security by providing a continuous stream of satellite imagery to monitor crop yields. In addition, children and young adults who grow up seeing the accomplishments of astronauts and space scientists are far more likely to be captivated by science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.