In Memoriam: Astronaut Neil Armstrong

“By
the yardstick of history, Neil Armstrong was among the most accomplished men
ever to walk on the planet that he looked upon from afar one magical week in
July 1969.”

The Associated Press’s
epitaph for one of America’s most memorable pioneers appropriately captures Neil Armstrong’s place in history.

For several generations of Americans, the pioneering spirit
and adventurism that helped carry Neil Armstrong to the moon also characterize a period of American history when our collective imagination seemed
boundless. With outstretched fingers Americans reached for the stars and in
less than a decade went from just terrestrial beings to lunar explorers. It is
a period of American history that, sadly, seems almost unimaginable today as we
increasingly look away from space.

In remembering Armstrong, we have an opportunity to reflect not
only on one of America’s greatest accomplishments, but also to re-imagine
America’s role in space and to search the stars for new opportunities for advancement.

The United States has enduring interests in space, from maintaining remote sensing satellites
that help scientists understand and track environmental change, to networks
of communications satellites that serve as the connective tissue of an
increasingly globalized world. And though federal space programs continue to be
squeezed in this fiscally constrained environment – and by all accounts we are
increasingly pressed to confront challenges here at home, on Earth – we should spend
some time thinking about America’s role in space, and how the United States can
wield this cosmic domain to further its interests.

To help spur some reflection on U.S. interests in space, I’m
reaching back to a piece my colleague Christine Parthemore and I wrote last
year exploring the decline of Earth monitoring satellites and its consequences
for U.S. national security: Blinded: The Decline of U.S. Earth
Monitoring Capabilities and Its Consequences for National Security.

You can expect more from me in the weeks ahead on how U.S.
policymakers should be thinking about using space to confront a range of
unconventional challenges.

Photo:
Neil Armstrong’s walk on the lunar surface. Courtesy of NASA. 

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