They adorn huge, rusting, abandoned buildings, and they celebrate the decades-old glories of a space program in a nation that no longer exists: the Soviet Union. The action in space is hardly confined to American companies or Russia’s program. For the past eight years, ever since NASA retired the space shuttle, the only way it has been able to get an American astronaut to the space station has been to hitch a ride with its Russian counterpart, known as Roscosmos, at roughly $82 million for a seat up and back down. Eight months later, the US sent astrophysicist Sally Ride into space, and two years later Savitsakaya became the first woman to spacewalk. The twin Voyager spacecraft have literally sped across the solar system and into interstellar space, the first human-made objects ever to do so. Fifty years on from the moon landing, this is where we are in space, if by "we," we mean human beings.

In turn, www.tiktok.com the only place in the universe these people can fly to is the International Space Station, some 250 miles above Earth, which is barely one-thousandth of the distance to the moon. Earth-and making it a better place. Well-armed Russian and Kazakh security officers in camouflage gear seem to have the place surrounded, and it’s bathed in floodlights. But it’s undeniable that something big is going on in space. Many of these space titans have a clear vision of where they’re taking the rest of us, but collectively we have barely begun to discuss the ethics-or wisdom-of it all. They’re more than 11 billion miles away and still communicating with us. Russian-speaking Ukrainians of Ukraine's southern and eastern regions have a more positive view of the USSR. Yet it’s also conceivable that a successor species to us will have long gone interstellar by then, hopefully granting us some recognition for their feat. Because the Voyagers could travel forever into the void and both the sun and the Earth have an expiration date (don’t worry, it’s a ways off), it’s conceivable that one day these sedan-size eternal sojourners will be the only evidence that we ever existed.

Blue Origin is also shaking up the race to put humans back on the moon, announcing in May that it’s building a lander named Blue Moon. And in Japan, JAXA, the official space agency, announced in March that it was working with Toyota to develop a crewed moon rover that would enable astronauts to travel 6,000 miles on the lunar surface. The very act of reaching the moon somehow exalted the human race, yielding confidence that we would indeed push deeper into space. Twelve people-all Americans, all men-have stepped on the moon, none since 1972, and other than on Earth-orbiting space stations, no human has set foot anywhere else in the universe. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Thomas O. Paine, was soon aiming for Mars, and not just as a someday goal but with a detailed itinerary laid out in National Geographic. In addition to many academic and research systems, several companies released commercial products in the 1980s, with various input/output types tried out.

China announced in April that it intends to build a research station on the moon’s south polar region within the next decade, although the nation’s space agency remains mum about how soon it might try to land "taikonauts," as its astronauts are known, on the lunar surface. All this is what was widely expected, amid the euphoria and wonder on July 20, 1969, when Eagle, Apollo 11’s lunar module, touched down on the moon’s surface. Enjoyed what I made but can’t help but wonder if I did something wrong. Two U.S. companies, SpaceX and Boeing, are moving closer to certification of their spaceship models, putting NASA "on the precipice of launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil," in the words of NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. Meanwhile, spacecraft built for two other private companies, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, have also made major strides, bringing us ever closer to a novel era of space tourism. Depart: October 3, 1983. Crew of 12, Valentina94.com split between two 250-foot-long spacecraft fired by nuclear rockets.