Morehead building, home of the morehead planetarium, which is now the morehead planetarium and science center. John morehead iii is from a famous North Carolina family. His grandfather was governor of North Carolina. John motely morehead iii attended carolina as an undergraduate in the school of chemistry, made an accidental discovery in a Chemistry Lab as an undergraduate that ultimately led to the founding of union carbide, and he became an extremely wealthy man. In the 1930s, when he conceived of this idea, what he did as a leading Science Education contribution was he built the planetarium. When we opened in 1949, the morehead planetarium was the first planetarium in the south, so his contribution was significant. We are also the first planetarium in the world on a university campus. So he visited the admiral planetarium in chicago, the hayden planetarium. He also visited zeiss, the leading lens manufacturer in the world. They arguably still are, in germany. He had a zeiss model ii projector installed, which was, at that time, the very best star projector in the world. His original vision was as a place of education and enlightenment. As a photograph here is a photograph released of the satellite. You will see it in the lower half of your television screen, so be sure that you watch very, very carefully. In the center of your screen, in the lower third todd in the late 1950s, the u. S. Government in response to sputnik being launched, and the advancement of the soviet union and their technology, especially with rocketry and Space Exploration, the u. S. Government felt threatened and felt like there needed to be a response, and so, nasa was formed in the late 1950s, and shortly thereafter, an announcement was made that we were going to send humans eventually into space. Our director at the time, tony jenzano, and the head of nasa at the time, communicated about the possibility of celestial navigation. The idea being that as the ancient mariners did, sailing the seas, using the stars as a way to navigate, the new pioneers could be able to use the stars just in case the Navigation Systems would fail, and so, from 1959 to 1975, morehead planetarium trained all of the astronauts in celestial navigation. I like to say that unc chapel hill was the only university in the country that can claim 62 astronauts as alumni. Because they came here for continuing education courses with celestial navigation. The morehead team always used pretty primitive technology themselves throughout the training. We had the zeiss projector, which was eventually replaced. The zeiss model ii was replaced in 1969 with the model vi, which was a better projector. But the philosophy of the training stayed the same. The Main Technology that they used was a barbers chair, and different wooden or cardboard hood attachments they would attach to the barber chair to simulate whatever the capsule is. The idea was whatever you could do to reorient the astronauts, so a barbers chairs seemed to work well. You could spin, you could work really well. You could pitch. All these things had to be stimulated that had to be similar to because that is with the astronauts experienced when they were in space. 62 astronauts i came here for celestial Navigation Training needed to know the night sky better than anyone. They learned specific constellations. Specific stars they could relate to. They could figure out where they were in space in relation to where the constellations were. You have to remember that they had no horizon when they were in space to reference. Their vision was restricted i the size of the windows. They may have only seen maybe 1 8 of the entire night sky we would see. They have no basis point. Thesera months astronauts knew where they were and a space because they knew where the important stars were. These were used in all the Early Missions because the navigated systems were so primitive. Although the celestial Navigation Training was used in every mission to calibrate and recalibrate Navigation Systems, the First Mission where it was critical that the knowledge of the night sky was used to get the astronaut back home safely was the mercury outlets mission of Gordon Cooper in the early 1960s. In that case, he faced all kinds of equipment failures including the Navigation System. He used his knowledge gained from morehead and the training andeceived to relocate manually reenter earths atmosphere. Interestingly enough, that was the only of that mission that was landed manually. It was the most accurate splashdown in the history of that series of missions. And so it ended. 34 hours, 21 minutes and 31 seconds. The Apollo Mission was also impacted. It was struck by lightning on takeoff. [indiscernible] throughout the Navigation System, the crew was able to use toir knowledge of the stars recalibrate their Navigation System that was thrown out from the lightning storm. They were able to reset pretty early in the mission. They were able to complete their mission. Apollo 13 is probably the most Famous Mission that did not land on the moon. There was an explosion and a fire. We have had a hardware resort hardware restart. There was a debris field. The general and his crew could not see where they were throughout the mission because of the debris cloud that surrounded the spacecraft. When they abort the mission to land on the moon, they orbited the moon right before they entered earths atmosphere, the debris field cleared. They were able to look out their windows to confirm they had adjusted their Navigation Systems correctly. Again, they used their knowledge gained from morehead training to ensure they were on the right path and they made it home safely. It really looks great. We like to say we trained astronauts and we are training future astronauts. And so, we want every visitor here to see that the sky truly is this guy is not even the limit. The sky is not even the limit. There is a huge universe out here that the pioneers of tomorrow are looking at the challenges of deep space but also the challenges on earth. The things were learning today, we have no idea how it will advance us. The people, is for especially the children, to walk through the doors to know that whatever contribution they can make is an important contribution. We have no idea how it will impact us. T 10, nine, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 up and burning. Two, 1, 0 and left off. The final left of. Shoulders of the Space Shuttle. America will continue the dream. On wednesday, nasa will launch two u. S. Astronauts into space for the First Time Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. The azure not will join the current team of two russians and one american on board the International Space station. Our look at the history of Space Exploration continues. Coming up, the story of teacher and astronaut Christa Mcauliffe and the illfated Space Shuttle challenger mission. Following that, nasa mathematician Katherine Johnson enter impact on Missions Including moon landings. First, a visit to the place responsible for the first ever precise measurement of the distance from the moon to the earth. Lickd in 1884, the overvatory in san jose has 150,000 photographs of the moon. James liked was a wealthy businessman in the salmon cisco area in the his fortune was over 1800s. 3 million back in the 1860s. And he wanted to be remembered. And george davidson, the president of the California Academy of sciences and george madera, an astronomer, who showed him what saturn looked like through a small telescope, were some of the factors that convinced him that a scientific monument that would make great discoveries was the right way to go. So he decided he wanted the superior toescope any in existence constructed as