From the very beginning, humanity has always felt the need to explore beyond what it has already explored; whether crossing the Atlantic to the New World or exploring the lands acquired through the Louisiana Purchase, humans have always felt the need to explore and study what they do not know (SV;SV). But now that the world has been all but drained of new places to explore, where does humanity turn? Of course the answer is space, the vast and great unknown. One of the major contributors to human space exploration is none other than the United States of America who have taken on great goals at the risk of human lives for the sake of knowledge, always trying to improve to get further from our planet. home planet. Over the years since its inception, the American space program has executed many major successful projects led primarily by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, in which America completed without assistance from other countries. Perhaps NASA's best-known feat was the world's first Moon landing, performed by Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin Jr., on July 20, 1969 (Andrews). This was an exceptional achievement considering that NASA had competed against the Soviet Union to put the first man on the Moon and emerged victorious even though the Soviet Union had an advantage. But although the Moon landing is the best known, other projects have produced much more useful results. For example, the Hubble Space Telescope is considered “one of the finest research instruments in the history of astronomy,” and the 44-foot-long telescope was sent into space on April 24, 1990; however, the telescope initially had a problem… halfway through… through all of this, America accumulated some initial knowledge of the infinite universe. Grissom sums it up well by saying that while there is danger in space exploration, the “conquest” of space is worth any number of risks. Works Cited Andrew, Bill. “50 Years of Americans in Space.” Astronomy. 01 February 2012: 20. eLibrary. Network. February 20, 2014. Bush, George W. “Remarks to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.” Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents 40.3 (2004): 66-68. Premier of academic research. Network. February 28, 2014.Desjarlais, Jr, Orville F. “A Step into the Unknown.” Aviator. 01 September 2003: 2. eLibrary. Network. February 27, 2014.Mari, Christopher, ed. Space exploration. Dublin, New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1999. Print. Today, USA. “NASA: 50 planets could support life.” Tribune-Review/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, February 3, 2011. ProQuest. Network. March 7. 2014.