Thanks to the reputation of Rice University faculty researchers (and the canny political maneuvering of two former Rice roommates), “Houston” became the first word broadcast from the surface of the moon.

Rice University began its first research collaborations with NASA in 1959, just months after the agency was founded, but starting as early as 1958, Rice alumnus and board chairman George R. Brown ’20 was already hard at work behind the scenes, trying to make sure that Houston and Rice would play leading roles in the race for space. In 1961, thanks in large part to Brown and his friend and former Rice roommate, Congressman Albert Thomas ’20, Houston’s transformation to “Space City USA” officially began when the city was named the site of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center).

Our decision is that this laboratory should be located in Houston, Texas, in close association with Rice University and the other educational institutions there and in that region.

On Sept. 12, 1962, as part of Rice’s semicentennial celebrations, then president John F. Kennedy spoke at Rice Stadium, challenging the United States to become “the world’s greatest space-faring nation.”

In direct response to President Kennedy’s speech at Rice, the university established the nation’s first dedicated space science department in 1963.

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon. On that historic mission, they carried with them a lunar dust detector experiment designed by Rice professor Brian O’Brien.

On a later Apollo mission, NASA astronauts carried to the moon a larger self-contained ion detection experiment built by Rice professor John Freeman. That apparatus remains on the lunar surface to this day and, hidden inside its heat shield, the proud Rice researcher who built it placed a tiny university pennant to jokingly “claim” this small part of the moon for Rice.

rice.edu/nasa
rice.edu/jfk-speech

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