Hello. My name is Megan. I recently visited Kennedy Space Center to learn about our outside heaven. There were so many things to do and so little time. On my journey to Kennedy, I kept a journal of what I learned. I would like to share it with you.

NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) started in 1958 when they first had the idea of going in our outside world. The first American man in space was Allen Sheppard, who was up in space for a total of 15 minutes. The first space program was Mercury. Mercury's goal was just to get a glimpse of space. The second program was Gemini. The next program was Apollo. In 1961 John F. Kennedy, the president, made a goal for our country to go to the moon. The NASA program was stunned by that goal. NASA had to build bigger and better rockets.

The program didn't always go smoothly. During a rehearsal of the Apollo 1 launch, the crew was in the cockpit and a spark hit some gases and started a fire. The crew was trapped inside and burned to death. This tragedy caused delays to the space program. Apollo 8 orbited the moon for the first time. Finally, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. The first man on the moon was Neil Armstrong. Even after that, trips to the moon didn't always go right. Apollo 13 started its trip to the moon, had an explosion and had to return to Earth without landing on the moon. Apollo 17 was the last time people went to the moon and Gene Cernann was the last man to walk on the moon.

Now our space program is orbiting the Earth with four different shuttles, Columbia, Endeavor, Atlantis and Discovery. We used to have five shuttles, but Challenger blew up shortly after launching. Even though our space technology has improved, we still have accidents. Some basic information about the shuttle is that it weighs 12 million pounds. The shuttle has three parts, the orbiter, the solid rocket boosters and the external tank. The shuttle uses one million pounds of thrust to launch and it can hold seven people.

I hope you enjoyed hearing about my exciting trip to Kennedy Space Center.