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NASA Apollo 11 revelation: Old recordings reveal JFK expressing doubts about moon mission

Wiki Images / Pixabay

Although the Apollo program ultimately became a success in 1969 when the first astronauts were able to land on the Moon, there was some skepticism coming from the White House in the year when NASA founded the program. In unearthed audio recordings, President John F. Kennedy expressed his doubts about the moon mission during a meeting in the Oval Office.

Audio recordings from the September 18, 1963 meeting at the Oval Office revealed what Kennedy privately thought of the upcoming space missions that NASA was in the midst of preparing. Kennedy was speaking with NASA’s administrator at the time, James Webb, about how the government could be able to sustain the Apollo program over a span of years without any hype in the political sphere. The Apollo program was formed in 1961.

Kennedy reportedly said, “It’s been a couple of years, and right now, I don’t think the space program has much political excitement,” To which Webb admitted that he agreed. “I mean, if the Russians do some tremendous feat, then it would stimulate interest again. But right now, space has lost a lot of its glamour,” said Kennedy.

Along with expressing some doubts, Congress at the time had also imposed some cuts to NASA’s budget, which would force the Apollo program into another year of delay. The meeting at the Oval Office also comes weeks prior to the elections, and Kennedy was concerned about whether or not he would get reelected. Kennedy asked what appeared to be a bleak question that should he win another term in the presidency, he would already be out of office by the time they could land on the moon. Kennedy was assassinated following the November elections in 1963.

Meanwhile, NASA and the ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured a supernova while roaming around the cosmos. The supernova occurred 70 million light-years away from Earth. The Hubble took several photos of the phenomenon. The supernova is formally referred to as SN2018gv and as its name implies, it was first discovered by astronomers back in 2018. This supernova was found within the spiral galaxy NGC 2525 in the Puppis constellation.

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