Artemis II: NASA preparing for Orion’s reentry and splashdown in Pacific Ocean<\/a><\/p>\nThe Galleria mall had just opened, the Beatles were breaking up, and the Watergate scandal was breaking.<\/p>\n
Records show a gallon of milk was 89 cents, and a loaf of bread was about 33 cents.<\/p>\n
But, just ask any Houstonian: through it all, we’ve been proud of our connection to spaceflight.<\/p>\n
Every time Americans have been to the moon, they’ve been in contact with mission control right here in Space City.<\/p>\n
On July 4, 1962, Main Street in downtown Houston was lined with about half a million people craning their necks to see space travel greats like Alan Shepard, the first American to go to space, and John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth.<\/p>\n
The space race was on, and H-Town’s baseball team was called the Colt 45s … not quite yet the Astros.<\/p>\n
In 1969, Houston’s big airport opened up, and Loop 610 was becoming a reality. Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and the first steps were from a Houston resident.<\/p>\n
From then until 1972, Americans landed on the moon six times.<\/p>\n
54 years later, while the beehive hairdos and pocket protectors may be gone, Space City’s commitment to space exploration continues.<\/p>\n
To put things in perspective, Artemis II astronauts set a record by going 248,655 miles from Earth… for Houstonians, that distance is roughly going around the Grand Parkway about 1,400 times, hopefully without traffic!<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Houston’s relationship with spaceflight hasn’t changed in over half a century since we last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[93336,56,58,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-244379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-93336","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-headlines","11":"tag-houston-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}