Who were the people behind the scenes that helped drive the Apollo program?
During the space race of the 1960’s, over 400,000 people were employed, with jobs as scientists, engineers, researchers and more to help land the first astronauts on the moon.
When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made those first steps on July 20th, 1969, it changed human space exploration forever.
But without those 400,000 people, that may never had happened. In her new podcast “The Other Moonshot,” part of LAist’s LA Made series, Joanne Higgins explores the untold stories of three black engineers who contributed to the program—including their passions, struggles and the discrimination they faced.
Higgins grew up hearing stories about her godfather, Charlie Cheathem, and his career in the space industry. However, she never realized he worked on the Apollo program until she was visiting him and his friend at the hospital and “they were just talking about it like two old buddies.” Higgins said she didn’t realize he played a key role in NASA’s moon shot.
“I recorded them right there in the hospital room, and then I listened to it a couple of days later, and I thought, wow,” Higgins said. “I didn't really learn about this part of the aerospace program in school, and I certainly didn't realize that my godfather actually had anything to do with going to the moon. So, I thought, well, if I don't know, maybe other people don't as well.”
Those recordings inspired Higgins to host the podcast. In the four-part series, Charlie Cheathem, Nathanial LeVert and Shelby Jacobs share their stories and their struggles working in the Apollo Program.
Higgins said the men faced a lot of discrimination on a day-to-day basis.
“Coincidentally, this race to space was also very much a race about race,” Higgins said. “Because it was right in the midst of the Civil Rights race that was going on all over the country, and specifically in Los Angeles at the time.”
However, Higgins said the men persevered. She said it was their passion for aerospace and creativity that drove them forward. For Higgins, she said these men are her own personal heroes.
“There are so many stories around us, and if we look and listen, we'll find them,” Higgins said. “And some of them are worth telling.”
The LA Made podcast “The Other Moonshot” is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other streaming platforms.
Missions launching this year that will help us understand our universe like never before
From observing over 450 million galaxies to studying Earth’s weather from space, NASA has several missions launching this year that will study our universe like never before.
The missions are SPHEREx, IMAP and Sentinel-6B, but to get these missions off the ground, prep is key.
Short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx will create a map of the cosmos like no other. Using a technique called spectroscopy to image the entire sky in 102 wavelengths of infrared light, SPHEREx will gather information about the composition of and distance to millions of galaxies and stars. With this map, scientists will study what happened in the first fraction of a second after the big bang, how galaxies formed and evolved, and the origins of water in planetary systems in our galaxy.
The observatory SPHEREx will map out galaxies and observe over 100 million stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. When it does launch, Denton Gibson, the launch director in NASA's Launch Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center here in Florida, said it will also launch with another mission alongside it: PUNCH.
Gibson said PUNCH is a collection of “four satellites about suitcase size that will work together to produce images of the inner solar system around the clock. It’s going to be looking at the sun's corona and the heliosphere, which is that kind of bubble around the Earth.”
Both PUNCH and SPHEREx will share a ride on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Gibson said while spacecrafts often share rides and launch together, a lot of prep is needed beforehand to assure the safety and practicality of all missions.
“Part of our job was ensuring that the flight trajectory is designed correctly, and that Falcon 9 also has the capability and ensure that it does that well enough to get SPHEREx exactly where it needs to be,” Gibson said.
Aside from SPHEREx, another mission called IMAP will study the planets and sun in our solar system. Specifically, IMAP will look at the heliosphere. According to NASA, the heliosphere is “the protective bubble surrounding the Sun and planets that is inflated by the constant stream of particles from the Sun called the solar wind.”
By studying the sun’s solar wind and particles, scientists can have a better understanding of space weather and how it can impact Earth. Space weather can also impact other missions and launches.
“If there's a major solar event going on and there's a significant radiation [event] just outside the atmosphere, we may decide to launch another day to avoid that,” Gibson said. “It really impacts a lot of satellites. That's absolutely something that is very important for us and future launches.”
Like space weather, another mission is focusing on weather on Earth. Sentinel-6B will continue to track sea level rise, along with the satellite’s predecessor Sentinel-6. The mission will also help observe extreme weather, like hurricanes, and help better enhance weather forecasting methods.
Gibson said Sentinel-6B is identical to Sentinel-6 and “will kind of be a sister satellite to that one, but it'll also help us better understand the Earth or threshold weather.”
