May The Fourth Aim for the Moon and Land in the Stars
May 4, 2026
May the fourth is a date widely associated with the Star Wars movies, which popularized the phrase “may the force be with you.” Through a little word play, the fourth day of May has punnily become Star Wars Day because it falls on “May the fourth.” And surely May 4 marks a fine day for catching up on the films from the ever-expading universe of Star Wars. However, let’s not forget that one reason Star Wars became so popular when the franchise’s first film hit the silver screen back in 1977 was America’s fascination with all things space at the time.
Twenty years earlier, Russia’s Sputnik satellite kicked off the space race that compelled the United States to fast-track its own space program and put people on the Moon by the close of the 1960s – a lofty goal met with the three astronauts aboard Apollo 11 in July 1969. The 1970s, when Star Wars launched to fame, was a decade of innovation for the U.S. space program. It was when the nation’s first successful space station (Skylab) was sent into orbit, the U.S. sent the Voyager deep-space probes into their interstellar journeys, and NASA built the foundations of the Space Shuttle program that hurtled Columbia beyond Earth’s atmosphere in 1981.
From PCGS