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History of Space Travel

Learn about the history of humans traveling into space.

The first earthling to orbit our planet was just two years old, plucked from the streets of Moscow barely more than a week before her historic launch. Her name was Laika. She was a terrier mutt and by all accounts a good dog. Her 1957 flight paved the way for space exploration back when scientists didn’t know if spaceflight was lethal for living things.

Humans are explorers. Since before the dawn of civilization, we’ve been lured over the horizon to find food or more space, to make a profit, or just to see what’s beyond those trees or mountains or oceans. Our ability to explore reached new heights—literally—in the last hundred years. Airplanes shortened distances, simplified travel, and showed us Earth from a new perspective. By the middle of the last century, we aimed even higher.

Our first steps into space began as a race between the United States and the former Soviet Union, rivals in a global struggle for power. Laika was followed into orbit four years later by the first human, Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin. With Earth orbit achieved, we turned our sights on the moon. The United States landed two astronauts on its stark surface in 1969, and five more manned missions followed. The U.S.’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched probes to study the solar system. Manned space stations began glittering in the sky. NASA developed reusable spacecraft—space shuttle orbiters—to ferry astronauts and satellites to orbit. Space-travel technology had advanced light-years in just three decades. Gagarin had to parachute from his spaceship after reentry from orbit. The space shuttle leaves orbit at 16,465 miles an hour (26,498 kilometers an hour) and glides to a stop on a runway without using an engine.

Space travel is nothing like in the movies. Getting from A to B requires complex calculations involving inertia and gravity—literally, rocket science—to "slingshot" from planet to planet (or moon) across the solar system. The Voyager mission of the 1970s took advantage of a rare alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune to shave off nearly 20 years of travel time. Space is also dangerous. More than 20 astronauts have died doing their job.

That hasn’t stopped people from signing up and blasting off. NASA’s shuttle program has ended, but private companies are readying their own space programs. A company called Planetary Resources plans to send robot astronauts to the Asteroid Belt to mine for precious metals. Another company named SpaceX is hoping to land civilian astronauts on Mars—the next human step into the solar system—in 20 years. NASA and other civilian companies are planning their own Mars missions. Maybe you’ll be a member of one? Don’t forget to bring your dog.

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A Brief History of Space Exploration

Humans have always looked up into the night sky and dreamed about space.

In the latter half of the 20th century, rockets were developed that were powerful enough to overcome the force of gravity to reach orbital velocities, paving the way for space exploration to become a reality.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Nazi Germany saw the possibilities of using long-distance rockets as weapons. Late in World War II, London was attacked by 200-mile-range V-2 missiles, which arched 60 miles high over the English Channel at more than 3,500 miles per hour. After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union created their own missile programs.

On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, into space. Four years later on April 12, 1961, Russian Lt. Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth in Vostok 1. His flight lasted 108 minutes, and Gagarin reached an altitude of 327 kilometers (about 202 miles).

The first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, went into orbit on Jan. 31, 1958. In 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American to fly into space. On Feb. 20, 1962, John Glenn’s historic flight made him the first American to orbit Earth.

Landing On The Moon

“Landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth within a decade” was a national goal set by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. On July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong took “one giant leap for mankind” as he stepped onto the Moon. Six Apollo missions were made to explore the Moon between 1969 and 1972.

During the 1960s, unmanned spacecraft photographed and probed the Moon before astronauts ever landed. By the early 1970s, orbiting communications and navigation satellites were in everyday use, and the Mariner spacecraft was orbiting and mapping the surface of Mars. By the end of the decade, the Voyager spacecraft had sent back detailed images of Jupiter and Saturn, their rings, and their moons.

Skylab, America’s first space station, was a human-spaceflight highlight of the 1970s, as was the Apollo Soyuz Test Project, the world’s first internationally crewed (American and Russian) space mission.

In the 1980s, satellite communications expanded to carry television programs, and people were able to pick up the satellite signals on their home dish antennas. Satellites discovered an ozone hole over Antarctica, pinpointed forest fires, and gave us photographs of the nuclear power plant disaster at Chernobyl in 1986. Astronomical satellites found new stars and gave us a new view of the center of our galaxy.

Space Shuttle

In April 1981, the launch of the space shuttle Columbia ushered in a period of reliance on the reusable shuttle for most civilian and military space missions. Twenty-four successful shuttle launches fulfilled many scientific and military requirements until Jan. 28,1986, when just 73 seconds after liftoff, the space shuttle Challenger exploded. The crew of seven was killed, including Christa McAuliffe, a teacher from New Hampshire who would have been the first civilian in space.

The Columbia disaster was the second shuttle tragedy. On Feb. 1, 2003, the shuttle broke apart while reentering the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven crew members. The disaster occurred over Texas, and only minutes before it was scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center. An investigation determined the catastrophe was caused by a piece of foam insulation that broke off the shuttle’s propellant tank and damaged the edge of the shuttle’s left wing. It was the second loss of a shuttle in 113 shuttle flights. After each of the disasters, space shuttle flight operations were suspended for more than two years.

Discovery was the first of the three active space shuttles to be retired, completing its final mission on March 9, 2011; Endeavour did so on June 1. The final shuttle mission was completed with the landing of Atlantis on July 21, 2011, closing the 30-year space shuttle program.

The Gulf War proved the value of satellites in modern conflicts. During this war, allied forces were able to use their control of the “high ground” of space to achieve a decisive advantage. Satellites were used to provide information on enemy troop formations and movements, early warning of enemy missile attacks, and precise navigation in the featureless desert terrain. The advantages of satellites allowed the coalition forces to quickly bring the war to a conclusion, saving many lives.

Space systems continue to become more and more integral to homeland defense, weather surveillance, communication, navigation, imaging, and remote sensing for chemicals, fires, and other disasters.

International Space Station

The International Space Station is a research laboratory in low Earth orbit. With many different partners contributing to its design and construction, this high-flying laboratory has become a symbol of cooperation in space exploration, with former competitors now working together.

The station has been continuously occupied since the arrival of Expedition 1 in November of 2000. The station is serviced by a variety of visiting spacecraft: the Russian Soyuz and Progress; the American Dragon and Cygnus; the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle; and formerly the Space Shuttle and the European Automated Transfer Vehicle. It has been visited by astronauts, cosmonauts, and space tourists from 17 different nations.  

Space launch systems have been designed to reduce costs and improve dependability, safety, and reliability. Most U.S. military and scientific satellites are launched into orbit by a family of expendable launch vehicles designed for a variety of missions. Other nations have their own launch systems, and there is strong competition in the commercial launch market to develop the next generation of launch systems.

The Future Of Space Exploration

Modern space exploration is reaching areas once only dreamed about. Mars is focal point of modern space exploration, and manned Mars exploration is a long-term goal of the

United States. NASA is on a journey to Mars, with a goal of sending humans to the Red Planet in the 2030s. 

NASA and its partners have sent orbiters, landers, and rovers, increasing our knowledge about the planet. The Curiosity Rover has gathered radiation data to protect astronauts, and the MARS 2020 Rover will study the availability of oxygen and other Martian resources.

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An Introduction to Space Exploration

While the observation of objects in space, known as astronomy, predates reliable recorded history, it was the development of large and relatively efficient rockets during the early 20th century that allowed physical space exploration to become a reality. Common rationales for exploring space include advancing scientific research, uniting different nations, ensuring the future survival of humanity and developing military and strategic advantages against other countries.

Space exploration has often been used as a proxy competition for geopolitical rivalries such as the Cold War. The early era of space exploration was driven by a “Space Race” between the Soviet Union and the United States, the launch of the first man-made object to orbit the Earth, the USSR’s Sputnik 1, on 4 October 1957, and the first Moon landing by the American Apollo 11 craft on 20 July 1969 are often taken as landmarks for this initial period. The Soviet space program achieved many of the first milestones, including the first living being in orbit in 1957, the first human spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1) in 1961, the first spacewalk (by Aleksei Leonov) on 18 March 1965, the first automatic landing on another celestial body in 1966, and the launch of the first space station (Salyut 1) in 1971.

After the first 20 years of exploration, focus shifted from one-off flights to renewable hardware, such as the Space Shuttle program, and from competition to cooperation as with the International Space Station (ISS).

With the substantial completion of the ISS following STS-133 in March 2011, plans for space exploration by the USA remain in flux. Constellation, a Bush Administration program for a return to the Moon by 2020 was judged inadequately funded and unrealistic by an expert review panel reporting in 2009. The Obama Administration proposed a revision of Constellation in 2010 to focus on the development of the capability for crewed missions beyond low earth orbit (LEO), envisioning extending the operation of the ISS beyond 2020, transferring the development of launch vehicles for human crews from NASA to the private sector, and developing technology to enable missions to beyond LEO, such as Earth/Moon L1, the Moon, Earth/Sun L2, near-earth asteroids, and Phobos or Mars orbit. As of March 2011, the US Senate and House of Representatives are still working towards a compromise NASA funding bill, which will probably terminate Constellation and fund development of a heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV).

In the 2000s, the People’s Republic of China initiated a successful manned spaceflight program, while the European Union, Japan, and India have also planned future manned space missions. China, Russia, Japan, and India have advocated manned missions to the Moon during the 21st century, while the European Union has advocated manned missions to both the Moon and Mars during the 21st century.

From the 1990s onwards, private interests began promoting space tourism and then private space exploration of the Moon (see Google Lunar X Prize).

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Everything you need to know about space travel (almost)

We're a long way from home...

Paul Parsons

When did we first start exploring space?

The first human-made object to go into space was a German V2 missile , launched on a test flight in 1942. Although uncrewed, it reached an altitude of 189km (117 miles).

Former Nazi rocket scientists were later recruited by both America and Russia (often at gunpoint in the latter case), where they were instrumental in developing Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) – rockets capable of carrying nuclear weapons from one side of the planet to the other.

It was these super-missiles that formed the basis for the space programmes of both post-war superpowers. As it happened, Russia was the first to reach Earth orbit, when it launched the uncrewed Sputnik 1 in October 1957, followed a month later by Sputnik 2, carrying the dog Laika – the first live animal in space.

The USA sent its first uncrewed satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit soon after, in January 1958. A slew of robotic spaceflights followed, from both sides of the Atlantic, before Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin piloted Vostok 1 into orbit on 12 April 1961, to become the first human being in space . And from there the space race proper began, culminating in Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin becoming the first people to walk on the Moon as part of NASA's Apollo programme .

Why is space travel important?

Space exploration is the future. It satisfies the human urge to explore and to travel, and in the years and decades to come it could even provide our species with new places to call home – especially relevant now, as Earth becomes increasingly crowded .

Extending our reach into space is also necessary for the advancement of science. Space telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope and probes to the distant worlds of the Solar System are continually updating, and occasionally revolutionising, our understanding of astronomy and physics.

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But there are also some very practical reasons, such as mining asteroids for materials that are extremely rare here on Earth.

One example is the huge reserve of the chemical isotope helium-3 thought to be locked away in the soil on the surface of the Moon . This isotope is a potential fuel for future nuclear fusion reactors – power stations that tap into the same source of energy as the Sun. Unlike other fusion fuels, helium-3 gives off no hard-to-contain and deadly neutron radiation.

However, for this to happen the first challenge to overcome is how to build a base on the Moon. In 2019, China's Chang’e 4 mission marked the beginning of a new space race to conquer the Moon, signalling their intent to build a permanent lunar base , while the NASA Artemis mission plans to build a space station, called Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway , providing a platform to ferry astronauts to the Moon's surface.

Could humans travel into interstellar space and how would we get there?

It’s entirely feasible that human explorers will visit the furthest reaches of our Solar System. The stars, however, are another matter. Interstellar space is so vast that it takes light – the fastest thing we know of in the Universe – years, centuries and millennia to traverse it. Faster-than-light travel may be possible one day, but is unlikely to become a reality in our lifetimes.

It’s not impossible that humans might one day cross this cosmic gulf, though it won’t be easy. The combustion-powered rocket engines of today certainly aren’t up to the job – they just don’t use fuel efficiently enough. Instead, interstellar spacecraft may create a rocket-like propulsion jet using electric and magnetic fields. This so-called ‘ ion drive ’ technology has already been tested aboard uncrewed Solar System probes.

Another possibility is to push spacecraft off towards the stars using the light from a high-powered laser . A consortium of scientists calling themselves Breakthrough Starshot is already planning to send a flotilla of tiny robotic probes to our nearest star, Proxima Centauri, using just this method.

Though whether human astronauts could survive such punishing acceleration, or the decades-long journey through deep space, remains to be seen.

How do we benefit from space exploration?

Pushing forward the frontiers of science is the stated goal of many space missions . But even the development of space travel technology itself can lead to unintended yet beneficial ‘spin-off’ technologies with some very down-to-earth applications.

Notable spin-offs from the US space programme, NASA, include memory foam mattresses, artificial hearts, and the lubricant spray WD-40. Doubtless, there are many more to come.

Read more about space exploration:

• The next giant leaps: The UK missions getting us to the Moon
• Move over, Mars: why we should look further afield for future human colonies
• Everything you need to know about the Voyager mission
• 6 out-of-this-world experiments recreating space on Earth

Space exploration also instils a sense of wonder, it reminds us that there are issues beyond our humdrum planet and its petty squabbles, and without doubt it helps to inspire each new generation of young scientists. It’s also an insurance policy. We’re now all too aware that global calamities can and do happen – for instance, climate change and the giant asteroid that smashed into the Earth 65 million years ago, leading to the total extinction of the dinosaurs .

The lesson for the human species is that we keep all our eggs in one basket at our peril. On the other hand, a healthy space programme, and the means to travel to other worlds, gives us an out.

Is space travel dangerous?

In short, yes – very. Reaching orbit means accelerating up to around 28,000kph (17,000mph, or 22 times the speed of sound ). If anything goes wrong at that speed, it’s seldom good news.

Then there’s the growing cloud of space junk to contend with in Earth's orbit – defunct satellites, discarded rocket stages and other detritus – all moving just as fast. A five-gram bolt hitting at orbital speed packs as much energy as a 200kg weight dropped from the top of an 18-storey building.

And getting to space is just the start of the danger. The principal hazard once there is cancer-producing radiation – the typical dose from one day in space is equivalent to what you’d receive over an entire year back on Earth, thanks to the planet’s atmosphere and protective magnetic field.

Add to that the icy cold airless vacuum , the need to bring all your own food and water, plus the effects of long-duration weightlessness on bone density, the brain and muscular condition – including that of the heart – and it soon becomes clear that venturing into space really isn’t for the faint-hearted.

When will space travel be available to everyone?

It’s already happening – that is, assuming your pockets are deep enough. The first self-funded ‘space tourist’ was US businessman Dennis Tito, who in 2001 spent a week aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for the cool sum of $20m (£15m).

Virgin Galactic has long been promising to take customers on short sub-orbital hops into space – where passengers get to experience rocket propulsion and several minutes of weightlessness, before gliding back to a runway landing on Earth, all for $250k (£190k). In late July 2020, the company unveiled the finished cabin in its SpaceShipTwo vehicle, suggesting that commercial spaceflights may begin shortly.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s SpaceX , which in May 2020 became the first private company to launch a human crew to Earth orbit aboard the Crew Dragon , plans to offer stays on the ISS for $35k (£27k) per night. SpaceX is now prototyping its huge Starship vehicle , which is designed to take 100 passengers from Earth to as far afield as Mars for around $20k (£15k) per head. Musk stated in January that he hoped to be operating 1,000 Starships by 2050.

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The solar system has one star, eight planets, five dwarf planets, at least 290 moons, more than 1.3 million asteroids, and about 3,900 comets. It is located in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy called the Orion Arm, or Orion Spur. Our solar system orbits the center of the galaxy at about 515,000 mph (828,000 kph). It takes about 230 million years to complete one orbit around the galactic center.

We call it the solar system because it is made up of our star, the Sun, and everything bound to it by gravity – the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; dwarf planets Pluto, Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, and Eris – along with hundreds of moons; and millions of asteroids, comets, and meteoroids.

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There are three general kinds of galaxies: elliptical, irregular, and spiral. The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy.

Room to Breathe

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Our solar system has more than 200 moons.

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Only two spacecraft have reached interstellar space, the space between stars. Three other spacecraft have achieved enough velocity to eventually travel beyond the boundaries of our solar system.

• Voyager 1  went  interstellar  in 2012 and  Voyager 2  joined it in 2018. Both spacecraft, launched in 1977, are still in communication with Earth.
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The History of Space Exploration

During the time that has passed since the launching of the first artificial satellite in 1957, astronauts have traveled to the moon, probes have explored the solar system, and instruments in space have discovered thousands of planets around other stars.

Earth Science, Astronomy, Social Studies, U.S. History, World History

Apollo 11 Astronauts on Moon

A less belligerent, but no less competitive, part of the Cold War was the space race. The Soviet Union bested its rival at nearly every turn, until the U.S. beat them to the finish line by landing astronauts on the moon.

NASA photograph

Humans have been traveling to space for over 60 years. Our journey officially began on October 4, 1957. On this day, the Soviet Union became the first country to send a human-made satellite into Earth's orbit . The Soviet Union was a large group of countries that included Russia. Its satellite was named Sputnik. A satellite is an object that orbits , or circles, a planet, moon, or star. Sputnik orbited Earth. It made one full trip around every 96 minutes. A month after the Sputnik launch, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik II. This was an even bigger accomplishment because Sputnik II carried the first living creature into space. It was a dog named Laika. A Race to Space For years, the United States and Soviet Union had been competing to develop satellites. The countries were not getting along at this time in history. The conflict was known as the Cold War. There were no battles. It was mostly a war of threats. Still, the United States was worried. They were falling behind in the race into space. The U.S. had been working on its own satellite before the launch of Sputnik. There were two failed attempts. Then, finally, the U.S. had success. It launched the Explorer satellite in 1958. Explorer carried scientific instruments, one of which was a Geiger counter. This tool allowed the U.S. to study high-energy rays in space. The rays reach our solar system from faraway stars and galaxies. In the late 1950s, the United States created a government group to run the space program. It is called the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA. The Soviets Met Many Space Goals First Meanwhile, Soviet successes continued. The first human in space was a Soviet named Yuri Gagarin. He made one orbit around Earth on April 12, 1961. His flight lasted 108 minutes. About three weeks later, NASA launched astronaut Alan Shepard into space. His spacecraft did not go all the way around Earth, though. The flight lasted just 15 minutes. The Soviet Union met several space goals ahead of the United States. The Soviets launched the first satellite , first dog and first human into space. They achieved the first spacewalk. This was the first time a person stepped outside of a spacecraft in space. They also sent the first woman astronaut into space. The U.S. Launches Forward In 1961, American President John F. Kennedy gave NASA a challenge. He wanted the U.S. to put a man on the moon before 1970. NASA worked hard to meet this challenge. They developed Project Gemini. Astronauts tested what would be needed for a flight to the moon. Project Apollo followed Project Gemini. Apollo took astronauts into orbit around the moon. Then it took them to the moon's surface. In 1969, on the Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong became the first human to step on the moon's surface. NASA had met President Kennedy's challenge. NASA would land humans on the moon five more times. During these missions, astronauts collected samples of rocks and dust that scientists still study today.

During the 1960s and 1970s, NASA also launched a series of space probes . Space probes do not have human pilots. They are robotic spacecraft that explore space. These probes studied the planets Venus, Mars, and Mercury. Probes Help Scientists Find Planets Space stations were the next step in exploring space. The first space station was the Soviet Salyut 1 station. This was launched in 1971. Then NASA launched the Skylab space station. Skylab was the first laboratory where astronauts and scientists studied Earth. Today, astronauts do research on the International Space Station. It's like a science lab orbiting Earth. Astronauts from many countries work together there. The Apollo Moon program ended in 1972. Much of today's space exploring is done by probes . Probes have made many discoveries. They have taken photos of the surface of Mars. They have even discovered oceans underneath the surface ice of one of Jupiter's moons. Scientists think these oceans may contain life. Other instruments in space do important work too. One example is the Kepler Space Telescope . Now retired, this space telescope has discovered thousands of exoplanets . These are planets outside of our solar system.

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What is Space?

Space, the final frontier, what is it?

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Dark matter and energy

Black holes, stars, planets, asteroids and comets, galaxies and quasars.

We often refer to our expanding universe with one simple word: space. But where does space begin and, more importantly, what is it?

Space is an almost perfect vacuum, nearly void of matter and with extremely low pressure. In space, sound doesn't carry because there aren't molecules close enough together to transmit sound between them. Not quite empty, bits of gas, dust and other matter floats around "emptier" areas of the universe, while more crowded regions can host planets, stars and galaxies.

From our Earth -bound perspective, outer space is most often thought to begin about 62 miles (100 kilometers) above sea level at what is known as the Kármán line . This is an imaginary boundary at an altitude where there is no appreciable air to breathe or scatter light. Passing this altitude, blue starts to give way to black because oxygen molecules are not in enough abundance to make the sky blue.

Related: Where DOES Space Begin? Virgin Galactic Flies Right into the Debate

No one knows exactly how big space is. It's difficult to determine because of what we can see in our detectors. We measure long distances in space in "light-years," representing the distance it takes for light to travel in a year (roughly 5.8 trillion miles (9.3 trillion kilometers)). 

From the light that is visible in our telescopes, we have charted galaxies reaching almost as far back as the Big Bang, which is thought to have started our universe about 13.8 billion years ago. This means we can "see" into space at a distance of almost 13.8 billion light-years. But the universe continues to expand, making "measuring space," even more challenging. 

Additionally, astronomers are not totally sure if our universe is the only one that exists . This means that space could be a whole lot bigger than we even think.

Space radiation invisible to human eyes

The majority of space is relatively empty, with just stray bits of dust and gas floating around. This means that when humans send a probe to a distant planet or asteroid, the craft will not encounter "drag" in the same way that an airplane does as it sails through space.

In fact, the vacuum environment in space and on the moon, is one reason why the lunar lander of the Apollo program was designed to have an almost spider-like appearance , as it was described by the Apollo 9 crew. Because the spacecraft was designed to work in a zone with no atmosphere, it didn't need to have smooth edges or an aerodynamic shape.

In addition to the bits of debris that speckle the "emptier" regions of space, research has shown that these areas are also home to different forms of radiation. In our own solar system, the solar wind — charged particles that stream from the sun — emanate throughout the solar system and occasionally cause auroras near Earth's poles. Cosmic rays also fly through our neighborhood, stemming from supernovas outside of the solar system.

In fact, the universe as a whole is inundated with what is known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is essentially the leftover radiation from the explosion mostly commonly known as the Big Bang. The CMB is the oldest radiation that our instruments can detect. 

Infographic: Cosmic Microwave Background Explained

There remain two giant mysteries about space: dark matter and dark energy . 

While scientists have provided extensive evidence for the existence of dark matter and dark energy, they are each still poorly understood as, so far, scientists cannot directly observe them and can only observe their effects. 

Roughly 80% of all of the mass in the universe is made up of what scientists have dubbed "dark matter," but it's not known what it actually is or if it is even matter by our current definition. However, while dark matter doesn't emit light or energy and cannot, therefore, be directly observed, scientists have found overwhelming evidence that it makes up the vast majority of the matter in the cosmos.

Dark energy might have a similar name to dark matter, but it's a whole different component entirely. 

Thought to make up nearly 75% of the universe, dark energy is a mysterious and unknown force or entity that scientists think is responsible for the universe's ongoing expansion.

Smaller black holes can form from the gravitational collapse of a gigantic star, which forms a singularity from which nothing can escape — not even light, hence the name of the object. No one is quite sure what lies within a black hole, or what would happen to a person or object who fell into it – but research is ongoing.

An example is gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time that come from interactions between black holes. This was first predicted by Albert Einstein at the turn of the last century, when he showed that time and space are linked; time speeds up or slows down when space is distorted.

As of mid-2017, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration has announced three black-hole interactions and mergers detected through gravitational waves, in just two years.

The team found these three events in about two years, indicating that when LIGO is implemented at full sensitivity, the observatory may be able to find these sorts of events frequently, scientists said in May 2017. Should a bunch of these black hole events be detected, it could help scientists learn how black holes of a certain size (several tens of sun masses) are born, and later merge into new black holes.

Stars (like our own sun) are immense balls of gas that produce their own radiation. They can range from red supergiants to cooling white dwarfs that are the leftovers of supernovas, or star explosions that occur when a big one runs out of gas to burn. These explosions spread elements throughout the universe and are the reason that elements such as iron exist. Star explosions can also give rise to incredibly dense objects called neutron stars . If these neutron stars send out pulses of radiation, they are called pulsar stars.

Planets are objects whose definition came under scrutiny in 2006, when astronomers were debating whether Pluto could be considered a planet or not . At the time, the International Astronomical Union (the governing body on Earth for these decisions) ruled that a planet is a celestial body that orbits the sun, is massive enough to have a nearly round shape, and has cleared its orbit of debris. Under this designation, Pluto and similar small objects are considered "dwarf planets," although not everyone agrees with the designation. After the New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto in 2015, principal investigator Alan Stern and others again opened up the debate, saying the diversity of terrain on Pluto makes it more like a planet.

The definition of extrasolar planets, or planets outside the solar system, is still not firmed up by the IAU, but essentially astronomers understand it to mean objects that behave like planets in our neighborhood. The first such planet was found in 1992 (in the constellation Pegasus ) and since that time, thousands of alien planets have been confirmed — with many more suspected. In solar systems that have planets under formation, these objects are often called "protoplanets" because they aren't quite the maturity of those planets we have in our own solar system.

Asteroids are rocks that are not quite big enough to be dwarf planets. We've even found asteroids with rings around them, such as 10199 Charilko. Their small size often leads to the conclusion that they were remnants from when the solar system was formed. Most asteroids are concentrated in a belt between the planets Mars and Jupiter, but there are also many asteroids that follow behind or ahead of planets, or can even cross in a planet's path. NASA and several other entities have asteroid-searching programs in place to scan for potentially dangerous objects in the sky and monitor their orbits closely. 

In our solar system, comets (sometimes called dirty snowballs) are objects believed to originate from a vast collection of icy bodies called the Oort Cloud. As a comet approaches the sun, the heat of our star causes ices to melt and stream away from the comet. The ancients often associated comets with destruction or some sort of immense change on Earth, but the discovery of Halley's Comet and related "periodic" or returning comets showed that they were ordinary solar system phenomena.

Among the biggest cosmic structures we can see are galaxies, which essentially are vast collections of stars. Our own galaxy is called the Milky Way , and is considered a "barred spiral" shape. There are several types of galaxies, ranging from spiral to elliptical to irregular, and they can change as they come close to other objects or as stars within them age.

Often galaxies have supermassive black holes embedded in the center of their galaxies, which are only visible through the radiation that each black hole emanates as well as through its gravitational interactions with other objects. If the black hole is particularly active, with a lot of material falling into it, it produces immense amounts of radiation. This kind of a galactic object is called a quasar (just one of several types of similar objects.)

Large groups of galaxies can form in clusters that are groups as large as hundreds or thousands of galaxies bound together gravitationally. Scientists consider these the largest structures in the universe.

This page was updated in Jan. 2022 by Space.com senior writer Chelsea Gohd.

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Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022 covering diversity, education and gaming as well. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years before joining full-time. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House and Office of the Vice-President of the United States, an exclusive conversation with aspiring space tourist (and NSYNC bassist) Lance Bass, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, " Why Am I Taller ?", is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota, a Bachelor of Journalism from Canada's Carleton University and a Bachelor of History from Canada's Athabasca University. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science at several institutions since 2015; her experience includes developing and teaching an astronomy course at Canada's Algonquin College (with Indigenous content as well) to more than 1,000 students since 2020. Elizabeth first got interested in space after watching the movie Apollo 13 in 1996, and still wants to be an astronaut someday. Mastodon: https://qoto.org/@howellspace

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In pictures: the history of space travel

Humans have been travelling to space for 60 years. Image:  Unsplash/Andy Holmes

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Stay up to date:, fourth industrial revolution.

• It's been 60 years since the first person flew in space.
• Since then, we have walked in space and flown to the moon.
• Today, the global space economy is worth $366 billion and brings many benefits to life on Earth.
• But space exploration has not been without its difficulties – and so far today it’s machines not men being sent to Mars.

Human space travel is 60 years old this year, and in those six decades it has helped us discover much about the universe. But it has also delivered many practical benefits back home.

From monitoring climate change to connecting people through satellites, space exploration has created solutions to some very down-to-Earth problems. Space technology is vital to global security and even helps to stop illegal logging, illegal fishing and illegal wildlife trade.

Have you read?

Who owns our orbit: just how many satellites are there in space, 6 space missions to look forward to in 2021, 5 ways space tech can help protect the planet.

Space is also a vital part of the global economy, accounting for $366 billion of economic activity every year, data from the World Economic Forum’s 2020 briefing paper, Six ways space technologies benefit life on Earth , shows.

Here are 15 images that show the history of those six decades in space.

1. The first man in space

On 12 April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly in space. His single orbit of the Earth ushered in a new age of human space travel. Tragically he was killed in a plane crash just seven years after his pioneering space mission .

2. The first Black astronaut

US Air Force captain Robert H Lawrence Jnr was chosen as the nation’s first African American astronaut in 1967 – but he died in a fighter plane crash before he could make his first space flight.

3. The first US space walk

4. A man on the moon

Neil Armstrong, who stepped off the Apollo lunar lander on 20 July 1969 with the famous words “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” , took this shot of fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin walking on the lunar surface shortly afterwards.

5. Earthrise

The Apollo 11 astronauts were the first people to see the Earth rise over the Moon’s horizon – a striking reminder that they were far from home.

6. A ticker-tape welcome

New York laid on one of its trademark ticker-tape welcomes for the crew of Apollo 11 after the first Moon landing. Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins led the parade.

7. International collaboration in action

The US Space Shuttle Atlantis docking with Russia’s Mir space station. By July 1995, when this picture was taken, the former space race rivals were collaborating in space exploration. The shuttle ferried two Russian cosmonauts to the space station.

8. A tragic moment

The dangers associated with space travel were tragically highlighted by the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger and its seven crew members on 28 January 1986. TV audiences watched in horror as the spacecraft exploded shortly after launch. Failed seals on a rocket booster were blamed for the accident.

9. The first Black woman in space

In September 1992, Mae Jemison became the first Black woman to fly in space on the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Dr Jemison, a physician with a degree in chemical engineering , worked as a general medical practitioner before joining NASA as a Mission Specialist.

10. Uncovering the secrets of the universe

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit by space shuttle Discovery in April 1990. In this picture, taken in 1993, NASA astronauts work on upgrades to Hubble , which has a better view of the universe than Earth-based telescopes .

11. Two galaxies meet

This remarkable image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows two galaxies grazing each other’s orbits. The gravitational forces of the galaxy on the left are distorting its neighbour, flinging stars and gas hundreds of thousands of light years across space.

12. The development that revolutionized space travel

The reusable US Space Shuttle not only simplified human space travel, its payload bay was used to deliver and recover satellites. But this was not without great risks. This image shows Space Shuttle Columbia lifting off on what would be its last mission in January 2003. The spacecraft broke up on re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all on board.

13. A home in space

Built in space from components flown into orbit, the International Space Station was completed between 1998 and 2011 with contributions from 15 nations. The 67 metre-long pressurised section has been continuously occupied since November 2000 .

14. A helicopter on Mars

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter rode to the surface of Mars attached to the Perseverance rover and made its first flight in the thin Martian atmosphere in April 2021. It was the first powered, controlled flight in any world beyond Earth.

15. The future of human space flight?

After the Space Shuttle programme ended in July 2011, the US partnered with Boeing and Elon Musk’s SpaceX for the Commercial Crew Programme to develop reusable craft to fly astronauts to the International Space Station. This image shows the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft making a soft landing in New Mexico in December 2019.

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License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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The Space Race

By: History.com Editors

Updated: February 21, 2020 | Original: February 22, 2010

After World War II drew to a close in the mid-20th century, a new conflict began. Known as the Cold War, this battle pitted the world’s two great powers—the democratic, capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union—against each other. Beginning in the late 1950s, space became another dramatic arena for this competition, as each side sought to prove the superiority of its technology, its military firepower and–by extension–its political-economic system.

Causes of the Space Race

By the mid-1950s, the U.S.-Soviet Cold War had worked its way into the fabric of everyday life in both countries, fueled by the arms race and the growing threat of nuclear weapons, wide-ranging espionage and counter-espionage between the two countries, war in Korea and a clash of words and ideas carried out in the media. These tensions would continue throughout the space race, exacerbated by such events as the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the outbreak of war in Southeast Asia.

Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for Cold War competition. On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile launched Sputnik (Russian for “traveler”), the world’s first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be placed into the Earth’s orbit. Sputnik’s launch came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one, to most Americans. In the United States, space was seen as the next frontier, a logical extension of the grand American tradition of exploration, and it was crucial not to lose too much ground to the Soviets. In addition, this demonstration of the overwhelming power of the R-7 missile–seemingly capable of delivering a nuclear warhead into U.S. air space–made gathering intelligence about Soviet military activities particularly urgent.

Did you know? After Apollo 11 landed on the moon's surface in July 1969, six more Apollo missions followed by the end of 1972. Arguably the most famous was Apollo 13, whose crew managed to survive an explosion of the oxygen tank in their spacecraft's service module on the way to the moon.

NASA Is Created

In 1958, the United States launched its own satellite, Explorer I, designed by the U.S. Army under the direction of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun . That same year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a public order creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA ), a federal agency dedicated to space exploration.

Eisenhower also created two national security-oriented space programs that would operate simultaneously with NASA’s program. The first, spearheaded by the U.S. Air Force, dedicated itself to exploiting the military potential of space. The second, led by the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ), the Air Force and a new organization called the National Reconnaissance Office (the existence of which was kept classified until the early 1990s) was code-named Corona; it would use orbiting satellites to gather intelligence on the Soviet Union and its allies.

Space Race Heats Up: Men (And Chimps) Orbit Earth

In 1959, the Soviet space program took another step forward with the launch of Luna 2, the first space probe to hit the moon. In April 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit Earth , traveling in the capsule-like spacecraft Vostok 1. For the U.S. effort to send a man into space, dubbed Project Mercury, NASA engineers designed a smaller, cone-shaped capsule far lighter than Vostok; they tested the craft with chimpanzees  and held a final test flight in March 1961 before the Soviets were able to pull ahead with Gagarin’s launch. On May 5, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space (though not in orbit).

Later that May, President John F. Kennedy made the bold, public claim that the U.S. would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. In February 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, and by the end of that year, the foundations of NASA’s lunar landing program–dubbed Project Apollo –were in place.

Achievements of Apollo

From 1961 to 1964, NASA’s budget was increased almost 500 percent, and the lunar landing program eventually involved some 34,000 NASA employees and 375,000 employees of industrial and university contractors. Apollo suffered a setback in January 1967, when three astronauts were killed after their spacecraft caught fire during a launch simulation. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union’s lunar landing program proceeded tentatively, partly due to internal debate over its necessity and to the untimely death (in January 1966) of Sergey Korolyov, chief engineer of the Soviet space program.

December 1968 saw the launch of Apollo 8, the first manned space mission to orbit the moon, from NASA’s massive launch facility on Merritt Island, near Cape Canaveral, Florida . On July 16, 1969, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong , Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins set off on the Apollo 11 space mission, the first lunar landing attempt. After landing successfully on July 20, Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon’s surface; he famously called the momen t “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Who Won the Space Race?

By landing on the moon, the United States effectively “won” the space race that had begun with Sputnik’s launch in 1957. For their part, the Soviets made four failed attempts to launch a lunar landing craft between 1969 and 1972, including a spectacular launch-pad explosion in July 1969. From beginning to end, the American public’s attention was captivated by the space race, and the various developments by the Soviet and U.S. space programs were heavily covered in the national media. This frenzy of interest was further encouraged by the new medium of television. Astronauts came to be seen as the ultimate American heroes, and earth-bound men and women seemed to enjoy living vicariously through them. Soviets, in turn, were pictured as the ultimate villains, with their massive, relentless efforts to surpass America and prove the power of the communist system.

With the conclusion of the space race, U.S. government interest in lunar missions waned after the early 1970s. In 1975, the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission sent three U.S. astronauts into space aboard an Apollo spacecraft that docked in orbit with a Soviet-made Soyuz vehicle. When the commanders of the two crafts officially greeted each other, their “ handshake in space ” served to symbolize the gradual improvement of U.S.-Soviet relations in the late Cold War era.

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Incorporate STEM journalism in your classroom

• Exercise type: Activity
• Topic: Space
• Category: Diversity in STEM
• Category: Literacy Practices

The Past, Present and Future of Spaceflight

• Download Student Worksheet

Purpose: Students will look at the past, present and future of spaceflight. They will learn how astronauts were once selected, how they are chosen today and how they might be chosen in the future. Students will discuss how having astronauts from diverse scientific professions, with diverse backgrounds and diverse physical abilities can improve space science and exploration.

Procedural overview: Students will read “ Artemis missions will usher in a new, more diverse crew of astronauts ” from Science News online. They will reflect on how most early astronauts were military fighter pilots and learn about the diversity of the current community of astronauts. After discussing what it might mean to have a more diverse community of astronauts now and in the future, students will share past experiences where working with a diverse group helped them accomplish a goal. Finally, students will imagine the future of space travel and will write about a diverse group of astronauts facing a challenge in space.

Approximate class time: 1 class period

Lined paper

Calculators

Directions for teachers:

Have students read the article “ Artemis missions will usher in a new, more diverse crew of astronauts ” from Science News online as homework. The article appeared in the Dec. 3, 2022 print edition of Science News with the title “Who gets to go to space?”

Help your students understand the meaning of diversity in groups before you begin.

After students read the article, they will learn how NASA historically chose astronauts and consider the diversity of the early astronauts.

Encourage students to think critically when answering the following questions. The students might want to do some supplemental online research.

1. Why do you think NASA selected fighter pilots to be the first astronauts?

Student answers will vary. Fighter pilots already knew how to fly, so they were easy to train as astronauts.

2. Why was there a height restriction for the first astronauts?

The space capsules were small; the astronauts needed to be able to fit in them.

3. What was the diversity like in this first group of astronauts? Be descriptive.

The first groups of astronauts were not diverse. All the astronauts were white and male, and they had the same training. They were all fighter pilots.

4. Why do you think it was beneficial to have military fighter pilots as the first astronauts?

The fighter pilots were trained to fly in dangerous situations and accepted that there were similar risks involved with space travel. Because of their experiences, they were expected to react calmly and solve technical issues as they arose.

5. Eugene Cernan was an astronaut on Apollo 17. Cernan was both an engineer and a fighter pilot, but stated that “Science is not the reason we learned to fly.” Do you agree with his statement? Why or why not?

Student answers will vary. I agree with Cernan’s statement because flying to the moon and back was the goal of the Apollo missions. I disagree with Cernan’s statement because one of NASA’s goals is to explore and learn more about space.

The present

After learning about the past, students will look at how NASA’s astronaut pool has become more diverse and will analyze the “Science expertise” diagram from “ Artemis missions will usher in a new, more diverse crew of astronauts .” In their diagram analysis, students will calculate the percentage of astronauts with science and military backgrounds and observe how astronaut diversity has changed over time.

Make sure that students have access to the diagram and a calculator while answering the questions. Before finishing this section, students will answer a question about their own experiences working in a diverse group.

After students answer the questions, ask them to share their answers to question number 7. Students may voluntarily share with a partner or share with the full class. Question 7 is meant to spark a discussion around the importance of diversity.

If needed, use the following questions to help guide the discussion toward the topic of diversity.

How were people in your group able to help you?/How were you able to help them?

What would have happened if most of the people in your group had been exactly like you? Would you have been able to complete your goal? What were the benefits of working with a diverse group of people?

1. Why do you think NASA sent a geologist to the moon as one of the first science-astronauts?

NASA sent the geologist to the moon because geologists study the composition of the Earth and could study the composition of other planets or moons. This means sending him to the moon would give us more information about the moon’s composition that could not be observed through samples alone.

2. Look at the diagram titled “Science expertise” and determine what percentage of Apollo astronauts had a science background. What percentage had a military background?

32 total astronauts

15 astronauts with a science background, 15/32 = .46875 = 47%

28 astronauts with a military background, 28/32 = .875 = 88%

3. What percentage of current NASA astronauts have a science background? What percentage have a military background?

43 total astronauts

43 astronauts with a science background, 43/43 = 1 = 100%

26 astronauts with a military background, 26/43 = .60465 = 60%

4. How has the scientific training of astronauts changed over time? Use your calculations and the diagram to support your answer.

Over time, astronauts have become more diverse in their scientific training. Most astronauts on the Apollo missions had no advanced science degrees and came from the military. Of the astronauts with science backgrounds on the Apollo missions, most were engineers. Only 2 of the 32 astronauts focused on other sciences. Now, all astronauts have scientific backgrounds.

5. What do you think is the benefit of having a crew with diverse scientific backgrounds?

Having a crew with diverse scientific backgrounds will help us learn more about space as the scientists (astronauts) will be able to directly observe what they encounter there. The astronauts will also have different knowledge and ways of thinking that may help them find creative solutions to any problems they may encounter. For example, scientists could be trained to perform specific experiments when in space. These experiments would be designed on Earth, so adapting them to the conditions present in space would require skills derived from many years of scientific practice. Having astronauts familiar with these scientific practices would be beneficial to adapt experiments so that they still yield accurate results.

6. In what other ways have astronauts become more diverse?

Astronauts used to be primarily white males. The pool of astronauts today includes women and people of color.

7. Think of a time when you worked in a diverse group. How did having diverse perspectives help you accomplish a goal?

Student answers will vary. I was struggling while working on a biology project about pill bugs and could not figure out how to test their response to stimuli. A member of our group, who hikes regularly, said that they usually find pill bugs under logs. I asked why they thought that pill bugs preferred hiding under logs, and they said that they think it’s because it is dark, damp and cool. I then suggested that we test the bugs’ response to light. A different member of the group, who likes to build things at home, suggested that we could use two connected containers, one covered and one uncovered, to see which container the pill bugs preferred. Because I knew nothing about pill bugs, I needed the knowledge and perspectives of my group members to help design the experiment.

Students will use their creative writing skills to describe what space travel might look like some day. The questions below are designed to help students develop ideas for their fictional story. The questions can be used to create characters, settings and plotlines. After developing their ideas, students can write their story as homework.

1. What does the quote “We can’t become a spacefaring species if only some of us can go” mean to you?

Student answers may vary. This quote means that space should become a place that anyone can travel to, no matter their race, nationality, ability or knowledge. This quote means that space could become a place for humanity to search for new planets as our current planet cannot sustain our current resource use.

2. Why is AstroAccess organizing flights for people with disabilities?

The AstroAccess flights for people with disabilities could help us understand potential challenges that astronauts could face in space and help design spacecraft to navigate these challenges.

3. Describe a problem or challenge that astronauts could face during space travel.

Student answers will vary. Astronauts could have a problem with their equipment that causes the cabin to fill with smoke, making them unable to see. Without being able to see and having gravity to orient them, it would make performing tasks such as navigating extremely hard. Astronauts could have a problem with their spaceship when leaving a planet, leaving them stranded. They would have to adapt to the planet’s harsh conditions and work together to survive. Astronauts could have a problem where Earth becomes uninhabitable during their mission, making them the last humans left alive. This would mean that they have no backup or support from Earth and are entirely on their own in figuring out how to survive in space.

4. What might a diverse space crew look like in the future?

Student answers will vary. The crew members probably come from different places around the world, speak a variety of languages and have different professions, which are not limited to the sciences.

5. Create a diverse space crew, describing what experiences and motivations are bringing them to space.

Student answers will vary. Bob is a teacher from the United States of America who wants to help his students experience space; Aabha is an engineer from India who is an expert in advanced rocketry, and Grace is a European filmmaker who is making a documentary about spaceflight.

6. How could each member of the team contribute to solving a problem or challenge you identified?

Student answers may vary. The problem is smoke is filling the spacecraft. The filmmaker would turn on emergency lights for the spacecraft. Bob the teacher, who is blind, would fix the equipment issue with guidance from the engineer, since he is used to using equipment while unable to see. When the astronauts notice that the spacecraft is grounded and cannot return to earth, the filmmaker, who gardens at home, would start planting seeds in the greenhouse while the engineer would set up the lights and other equipment needed for the greenhouse. In the meantime, the teacher would set a schedule for the emergency rations by calculating how many emergency rations they each can use until the plants are harvestable.

Space stories

Using ideas developed from the prompt questions, students can write a creative story that shows how a diverse crew of astronauts could navigate a problem or challenge in space.

A good creative story includes strong characters, a well-described setting and a plausible plotline. The plot should make sense relative to the characters and the situations they find themselves in. Students should aim for a story of at least 250 words.

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Erin Hawley: The Woman Arguing Against the Abortion Pill

Erin Hawley, a law professor and wife of Senator Josh Hawley, is arguing the Supreme Court case.

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By Elizabeth Dias and Abbie VanSickle

It was 2014, and Erin Morrow Hawley was fighting against the egg-laying hens of Missouri. Specifically, a new requirement that chicken cages have enough space for the hens to stand up, turn around and stretch out.

A law professor from five generations of ranchers and the wife of Senator Josh Hawley, Ms. Hawley joined a challenge to California, which required more spacious enclosures for hens laying eggs to be sold there. The state where she taught, Missouri, sold a third of its eggs to California, and Ms. Hawley believed that a blue state had no right to impose its values and rules on Missouri’s farmers.

She joined in a lawsuit against California’s attorney general at the time, Kamala Harris. A judge found that the challengers could show no direct injury and dismissed the case. Ms. Hawley continued teaching, and Ms. Harris became Joe Biden’s vice president.

Ten years later, Ms. Hawley, 44, is now at the center of one of the country’s most heated cultural battles about bodily autonomy, gender roles and abortion. On Tuesday, for the first time since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court considered a case involving nationwide limits on abortion access. And Ms. Hawley was the woman standing before the justices, arguing to sharply curtail access to the abortion pill.

The case centers on the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a commonly available drug used in the majority of abortions in the country. Limiting medication abortion is a next frontier for the anti-abortion movement in the post-Roe era.

Ms. Hawley represents a group of anti-abortion doctors and an umbrella group of conservative medical associations that claim that the abortion pill — approved more than two decades ago — is a danger to women. The F.D.A. has pointed to substantial scientific evidence that the medication abortion is safe .

Ms. Hawley views the cause as similar to her fights against government interference, rooted in her experience of ranch life.

“You see how those regulations impact people that are really living on the ground, and sometimes for good and sometimes maybe not for good,” she said in an interview with The Times earlier this month. “And so being pro-life, and believing that every child, no matter how small, no matter if they’re not yet born, is invested with inherent dignity and worth — government action can have a lot to say about that as well.”

She argues that federal approval of the abortion pill went forward without enough consideration of possible side effects and dangers, and that subsequent changes to enable greater access have ignored health risks to women.

The government lawyers in this case, led by Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, have argued in court filings that Ms. Hawley and her legal team offered scant evidence of real injury, and that declarations from “seven identified doctors” were “often vague or conclusory.”

Ms. Hawley’s particular background makes her ideal for this moment. Her longtime interest in limiting the power of the administrative state is well suited to speak to the current court’s conservative supermajority, which has welcomed cases challenging regulations on everything from herring fish to machine guns and, now, abortion.

Ms. Hawley brings her credentials not only as a former clerk to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. but as a millennial Christian mother. An evangelical believer who forefronts her identity as a wife and mother of three, Ms. Hawley works for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a powerful conservative Christian legal group. She represents the ideals of womanhood many in the anti-abortion and conservative Christian movement seek to elevate.

Until now, Ms. Hawley has been best known as the wife of Senator Hawley, Republican of Missouri, who actively sought the overturning of Roe and has supported anti-abortion legislation.

In a campaign ad for him, Ms. Hawley starred as an everyday mom, playing with their children in the kitchen, while he took the spotlight. But she will be one of a few women to argue a prominent abortion case at the Supreme Court for the anti-abortion side.

Even anti-abortion leaders often said “who?” or “Josh’s wife?” when asked about Ms. Hawley. Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, has met her at events supporting Senator Hawley but did not realize that Ms. Hawley was arguing the mifepristone case.

“There are millions of conservative women all over our country who are educated and powerful and love their families, similar to Erin Hawley,” Ms. Nance said. “She is actually fairly typical of young millennial conservative Christian women coming up through the ranks.”

But it may be Ms. Hawley, not Sen. Hawley, whose work will most power the anti-abortion cause.

“I think it may be more accurate to say that he’s Erin Hawley’s husband,” Mary Ziegler, a law professor and historian at University of California, Davis, said of the senator. “I think people are just beginning to see how influential she is.”

Erin Morrow was born into a family of frontier women and grew up on a cattle ranch near Folsom, N.M., population roughly 50. The foundation of her great-great-great grandmother’s homestead is still visible on the land, where family lore says that as a young widow, she outwitted marauding bandits.

The oldest of three daughters, Ms. Hawley was raised mainly by her mother after her parents divorced. Her father, a former national rodeo champion who struggled with alcoholism and depression, died by suicide when she was in high school, a pivotal moment she has spoken about on her podcast . Her mother, Shari Morrow, ran the family’s ranch, WineCup, and started teaching Erin to ride horses before she could walk.

“She was there when the bus came home, and often she’d throw us on horseback, and we’d help her move cattle, and we were able to sort of participate in her job in a small way,” Ms. Hawley said in the interview with Times reporters. “She was just a wonderful example of putting her family first but also doing something she loved and cared about.”

Her mother, a registered Democrat in the 1990s, had wanted to be a veterinarian, and for a while her daughter did too. Ms. Hawley studied animal science at Texas A&M University and considered a doctorate in genetics. But an internship for the House Committee on Agriculture sparked her interest in regulatory law.

Ms. Hawley started law school at the University of Texas in Austin, then transferred to Yale Law School, where she was a senior editor on the law review.

She clerked for J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and for Chief Justice Roberts in 2007.

There, her desk faced that of another clerk from Yale, Josh Hawley, and they secretly dated. He persuaded her to get married, when she was skeptical after having grown up “in a home with a marriage that wasn’t ideal,” she said in a podcast, and they moved back to his home state of Missouri.

When they searched for jobs, she impressed the faculty at the University of Missouri’s School of Law and expressed interest in filling a need to teach tax law. The school offered jobs to both of them.

Together they started the Missouri Liberty Project, “dedicated to promoting constitutional liberty and limited government.” But her husband’s career soon took the lead in their lives. As he campaigned for the U.S. Senate, she wrote a devotional book for mothers, drawing spiritual lessons from the lives of her children while comfortably weaving in references to modern theologians like Stanley Hauerwas. Her light textual analysis of original Greek words in the Bible echoes her approach to interpreting the Constitution in her legal work.

“Why can’t a high-powered lawyer also share that side of her life? Why not? That is her foundation, that is who she is,” said Julie Holmquist, who edited the book.

Ms. Hawley had expected her husband to pursue a political career after their children were grown. When they felt God calling him to run for office, she packed the family onto the campaign bus. The couple voted at their home church, The Crossing Church, an evangelical Presbyterian congregation, and the Hawleys moved to Washington.

Only a few months into her role as a lawyer for the conservative Christian legal advocacy group A.D.F. in 2021, Ms. Hawley flew to Mississippi to strategize on the Dobbs case, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

Ms. Hawley and her infant daughter arrived on time, but her babysitter did not. In the middle of the meeting, the baby let out a wail.

As Ms. Hawley tells it, this moment encapsulated her purpose, both as a Christian mom and as a lawyer aimed at dismantling the right to abortion. On the couple’s podcast, she described her baby’s crying as “a tangible reminder of why the Dobbs case might matter so much.”

At a speech after the Dobbs oral argument, Ms. Hawley said she had “been blessed to have a front-row seat on this case.” She added, “As a conservative mother, I can tell you it has been the project of a lifetime.”

Ms. Hawley has notched other legal victories, becoming synonymous with conservative social-issue cases. She worked on 303 Creative, the case in which the Supreme Court justices ruled in favor of a Colorado web designer who cited the First Amendment in refusing to serve same-sex couples.

Ms. Hawley is currently helping the Idaho attorney general defend the state’s abortion ban from a challenge by the Biden administration.

At the Supreme Court on Tuesday, her unique background was on display, even as most justices seemed skeptical of her argument. She answered a question from Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. about determining standing — whether the anti-abortion doctors could show direct harm — by referencing how the court considered the issue in a case about genetically engineered crops. In that case, Ms. Hawley said, the court looked at “the distance that bees might fly in order to pollinate seed farms,” she said. She had the support of her husband, who was present in the courtroom.

Even with the pressure of a first-time oral argument, she said in the interview that she remained calm because the decision was ultimately up to God.

“Christians are called to work with excellence but also to rest in the knowledge that God is sovereign, and that we can trust the results to Him,” she said. “To have the faith that all of it is in His hands, I think does help.”

The justices are expected to make a decision in June.

Julie Tate and Kitty Bennett contributed research.

Elizabeth Dias is The Times’s national religion correspondent, covering faith, politics and culture. More about Elizabeth Dias

Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting. More about Abbie VanSickle