On August 21, 2017, The Great American Eclipse traversed the entire United States, from coast to coast. Americans everywhere purchased special glasses that allowed them to view the eclipse without damaging their eyes. Entire schools closed so that children could be outside, and college kids all over the country gathered on the quads of their campuses to get a glimpse of the first total solar eclipse the U.S. has seen in 38 years. It was one of the year's biggest events, and for one moment, it brought the country together.

This event might seem insignificant now, but for me, it proved that Americans are still interested in space, not out of fear or concern, but out of sheer excitement and curiosity. This gives me faith that America's space program will have a promising future, and will continue to explore the final frontier.

America's space program has sort of dwindled since the end of the Space Shuttle flights in 2011. In fact, the U.S. wasn't sending astronauts into space at all, so they had to partner with Russia, who was sending their astronauts into space using their Soyuz space capsule. Our astronauts had to learn Russian, since all the controls in the Soyuz were in Russian, and they had to launch from Kazakhstan, which has been where the Soviet and Russian spacecraft have launched since 1957. Not only did it show that the government wasn't willing to invest in space travel anymore, it showed that the American people just didn't care about space anymore.

When I learned about the Space Race in high school, I learned that one main thing motivated America to put a man on the moon: war.

We put a man in space because Russia was trying to put a man in space, we put a man on the moon because Russia was trying to put a man on the moon. The Cold War was in full swing, and America's space program was more militaristic than scientific. Now that we don't have a quintessential "bad guy" to compete with, space travel can seem obsolete.

However, this does not mean we should give up. We are on the verge of something extraordinary: a visit to Mars. A trip to the moon will seem like child's play compared to the challenge of sending human beings to Mars. In terms of sheer distance, the moon is 250,398 miles away from Earth, whereas Mars is about 33.9 million miles away. Looking at those numbers makes it seem impossible, but it might happen sooner than we think.

If we went back to the beginning of the 20th century and told our great-grandparents that we would find a way to put a man on the moon, they would look at us like we were absolutely insane. The same is true now for traveling to Mars. It seems like a pipe dream only for the idealists of our time. But the exciting thing is, it's not. We can and will get there, but in order for that to happen, we as a nation need to come together, and push for success the same way we did during the Space Race.

What excited me so much about the solar eclipse wasn't so much the eclipse itself, but America's response to it. People were invested in it, they were excited about it. It's in our DNA to be curious, to look up at the night sky and wonder what lies among the stars. I hope that moving forward, we always continue to wonder, and explore what extends beyond the small, blue planet we call home.