NASA was born of a Cold War crisis, the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union, a deeply embarrassing and threatening event to the United States. We believed that we were behind in exploring what President John Kennedy would call the "New Frontier" and that we were losing a race we had not even known we were running. Many asserted, and more of use wondered, whether we were falling behind in technical know-how and industrial capability relative to our arch rival. And, from a purely strategic point of view, Sputnik's beeping reminded us of our vulnerability to the Soviet missiles that we believed existed in great numbers.

I remember watching Sputnik as an eight-year-old boy from my home in Aberdeen, Maryland on several clear autumn evenings. As a nation, we looked to the skies and comtemplated the profound meaning of that small space-crart. Three years later, and for the only time in our history, space was an election issue. We responded to President Kennedy's rallying cry to "take longer strides," including the audacious goal to go to the Moon, "not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills." Thus was the Space Age born.

Times have changed - and so have our relations with the major nations of the world. Today, rather than competing with other countries in the exploration of space, we have teamed with them. Over half of NASA's space missions, from human space exploration to scientific discovery, involve international collaboration. NASA's constellation of Earth science satellites supplies more global climate change data than any other organization in the world. We have two robotic rovers and a lander operating on Mars today, working in conjunction with several reconnaissance satellites in orbit around the Red Planet, searching for water and evaluating the potential for life, while scouting for places Americans will one day live. Two Voyager spacecraft have departed our solar system, and we have missions on their way to Mercury and Pluto, the fire and ice of the solar system. Our space telescopes, like the Hubble, continue to unlock the mysteries of our universe.

Today, in fact, NASA engineers, scientists, and technicians are preparing Space Shuttle Atlantis for its mission next month to repair and enhance the capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the greatest machine mankind has ever built, it is a machine that transcends science, producing images that appear simultaneously in technical journals and on the walls of art museums.