RICE UNIVERSITY COMMEMORATES 60TH ANNV OF JFK’S SPEECH, Sept 12, 2022, Houston, TX, 12:00 pm ET

NASA and Rice University will commemorate the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s speech urging support for his goal, announced a year earlier, to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade.

JFK called upon the nation to commit itself to the goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth at a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961.

Congress and the American public were not especially enthusiastic and a year-and-a-half later he gave a speech at Rice University urging support for the goal, famously saying “we choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do these other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

This event commemorates that speech. It will air on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.

Participants are:

• NASA Administrator Bill Nelson
• Bob Cabana, NASA associate administrator
• Vanessa Wyche, director, NASA Johnson Space Center
• Shannon Walker, NASA astronaut
• Reggie DesRoches, president, Rice University
• Dr. David Alexander, director, Rice Space Institute (master of ceremonies)
• Jean-Loup Chrétien, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut, retired
• Avalon Hogans, Houston’s youth poet laureate

More information on this and related events are in the NASA press release.