How space exploration has changed our history

Efforts to explore outer space have influenced the functioning of society in numerous ways since the first Moon landing. Although, in the early days, these increasingly significant breakthroughs were met with boundless optimism, it has become clear in recent years that, despite its many advantages, space exploration also has its darker sides.

As early as the 1970s, space scientists believed that the advancement of science and the passage of time would radically reshape the way society functions through the possibilities offered by space travel, potentially providing solutions to several major global challenges, History Today writes.

We couldn’t live as we do today without satellites

Seven years before Apollo 11’s Moon landing, in 1962, NASA launched its first satellite into space. Today, nearly five thousand such devices orbit the Earth. Without them, not only would the internet and global information networks cease to function, but accurate weather forecasting and navigational systems such as GPS would also be unimaginable. Thanks to the progress of space research, we now possess a vast—though still alarmingly limited—amount of knowledge about how the universe operates.

Although NASA is frequently criticised for what many consider to be an excessively large budget, even at the height of the Apollo programme in the 1960s, its expenditure never exceeded 6% of the US federal budget; today, it typically accounts for around 0.5%.

The moon landing sparked a major leap forward for India

While the two principal players in the space race during the Cold War were the United States and the Soviet Union, India must not be forgotten. Following the two former superpowers and China, it became the fourth nation to successfully land on the Moon.

Struggling for decades with population and economic challenges, the Asian country launched its own space programme in 1962—around the same time as the first satellites were sent into orbit—with the goal of placing national development at its core. After six decades of research, India reached a historic milestone in 2023, when the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft successfully landed its crew on the Moon’s southern hemisphere for the first time.

Thanks to the exceptional cost-efficiency and scientific achievements of its space programme, India now boasts the world’s seventh-largest communications satellite fleet, opening up new opportunities for education, healthcare, and agriculture in the country’s most remote regions.