100 years ago, a liquid-fueled rocket took to the skies for the very first time. Designed by Clark University physics professor Robbert Goddard, the unlikely device was launched from a cabbage field in Auburn, Massachusetts on March 16, 1926.
Goddard’s design climbed a measly 40 feet into the air that day, but launched the world into an era of modern rocketry that would lead to first moon landing less than 50 years later. After its initial success, Goddard continued to develop increasingly sophisticated systems and breakthroughs that paved the way for the technological foundation on which almost all major rockets, from early missiles and military vehicles to orbital launch vehicles, have been based. And, within just a few decades, would bear humanity’s first satellites and finally astronauts in room.
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Today, Goddard is considered the father of modern rocketry, and is the namesake of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Much of the technology introduced in his designs remains central to the function of today’s launch vehicles, including turbopumps, gimbal motors and gyroscopic guidance.
These technologies evolved to support NASA’s missions during space race in the 1960s, with astronauts in orbit as part of the agency’s Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, and as the decades wore on, space shuttle.
Now, Goddard’s basic functions are being put back to work as part of NASA’s Artemis program to return humanity to the Moon.
Goddard’s rocket was only 3 meters tall and burned liquid oxygen and gasoline – a revolutionary idea at a time when rockets relied almost exclusively on solid propellants. Solid rocket boosters, like the kind designed to help lift NASAs Space Launch System (SLS) for Artemis through Earth’s atmosphereis still in use today. However, solid boosters have some drawbacks. Once lit, they ignite. There are no fixed extinguishing agents after ignition. They will burn all the way through with a steady force until they are used up.
Liquid propellants, on the other hand, allow engineers to throttle raw power into a precisely controlled thrust, offering far more power than their solid predecessors. The concept is simple: liquid fuel and oxidizer are pumped into a chamber where they are ignited to create an explosion of superheated gas that is channeled and ejected from a motor nozzle at tremendous speed, propelling a rocket upward, or in whatever direction it happens to be pointing.
Just like its earliest predecessor, the SLS relies on the introduction of a spark to a mixture of pressurized liquid fuel and liquid oxygen to propel the massive 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket into orbit. On top of that rocket when it launches no earlier than April 1, an Orion spacecraft will carry NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day mission around the moon and back to Earth.
Their mission, Artemis 2is the first manned flight of NASA’s new lunar program, which aims to eventually establish a permanent human presence on the lunar surface. While the Artemis 2 astronauts will not land on the moon themselves, their mission is an important stepping stone toward NASA’s ultimate goal.
Ultimately, Artemis 2 is intended as a manned shakedown flight for Orion. Similar to the development of space missions in the 1960s, NASA has shaped every flight of The Artemis program to build on the predecessor.
Following a successful demonstration of Orion’s lunar life support systems on Artemis 2, Artemis 3 will launch into Earth orbit to practice rendezvous and docking maneuvers with the program’s lunar landers. NASA plans to launch Artemis 3 at some point during 2027, with Artemis 4 reserved as the program’s first manned lunar landing scheduled for 2028.
Artemis 2 is expected to launch much earlier. That mission is potentially just weeks away from the promise. Artemis 2 SLS is currently scheduled to roll out from the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, to the pad at Launch Complex-39B on March 19. Once there, NASA hopes to prepare the rocket and ground systems for a launch window that runs from April 1 to 6.
What began as a small experimental flight in that Massachusetts field eventually sparked a century of exploration that continues to carry us into stars today. In the hundred years since Goddard’s first launch, rockets have grown from experimental machines to the backbone of space exploration, enabling humanity’s exploratory reach to extend to every planet in our the solar system and beyond. And as NASA prepares to return humanity to the moon with Artemis, the legacy of the first liquid rocket remains visible in every mission.
