On Wednesday afternoon, NASA interrupted the daily news cycle’s perpetual scroll of doom with some fun news: a “major announcement” is coming—about the moon! The announcement, the space agency said, would arrive the afternoon of Monday, October 26, giving everyone the opportunity to daydream about might be coming.
Whatever it is, this news is especially exciting for Texans, since the moon is spiritually—if not geographically—a part of our great state. Legend has it that the first word spoken on the moon, as former Texas governor Rick Perry was fond of pointing out, was “Houston,” after all. (That story might not be entirely true, but we are sticking with it.) NASA’s home during its heyday was right here, after all, and the speech in which Kennedy announced the American moon shot was made at Rice Stadium. The moon rocks collected during the Apollo 11 mission reside in Houston, and the “capcom” astronauts the flight crew spoke with were talking to them from Johnson Space Center.
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