The origins of spaceflight can be traced to many different historical moments, but few are as resonant as the brisk spring day when a determined professor successfully launched the first liquid-fueled rocket from a snowy field in Massachusetts.

Robert Goddard, a founding father of rocketry, achieved this feat on the afternoon of March 16, 1926, on his Aunt Effie’s farm near his hometown, Worcester. The rocket, nicknamed “Nell,” reached a height of about 41 feet before crashing back down into Effie’s cabbage patch. Though it only lasted a few seconds, the experimental flight proved the concept that eventually allowed humanity to fulfill our millennia-old dream of becoming a spacefaring species.

In the century that has elapsed since the historic flight, humans have walked on the surface of the Moon (six times!), sent robots to interplanetary frontiers, launched telescopes that can peer into the early universe, built long-term orbital habitats, and even sent our artificial emissaries into the expanse of interstellar space.

All of these endeavors — no matter how complex and grandiose — are descended from Goddard’s modest rocket, which was fueled by a mix of gasoline and liquid oxygen. While solid-fueled rockets date back many centuries, Goddard recognized that liquids would provide more efficient power and control over future spacecraft, among many other advantages. He began innovating along these lines in 1921, and persisted for five years before finding the breakthrough that now undergirds most of modern spaceflight.

As the centennial of Nell’s flight approaches, space enthusiasts around the world plan to mark the occasion. Clark University, where Goddard served as a professor of physics, has many events planned this month around his old stomping grounds in Massachusetts, as does Worcester Polytechnic Institute, his alma mater.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which is named in his honor, also celebrated the milestone over the weekend. Roswell, New Mexico, is also holding an event honoring the centennial at a high school named after Goddard, who spent more than a decade developing rockets in this famously UFO-centric town during the 1930s and 1940s.

In addition, Lowell Observatory historian Kevin Schindler and Charles Slatkin of the Wonder Mission just published a new book called Robert Goddard’s Massachusetts that chronicles Goddard’s research in the state, featuring more than 200 historical photographs. Jim Lovell, the famed Apollo astronaut who died last year at 97, wrote in the foreword that “Goddard’s work showed me that space travel wasn’t just science fiction. Long before NASA existed, he believed that reaching the stars was not only possible — it was inevitable.”

“His vision, determination, and scientific rigor inspired me, as they did so many others, to pursue a career in aerospace,” Lovell added. “For me, Dr. Goddard was more than a pioneer — he was a guiding light whose ideas helped launch a generation of engineers, scientists, and astronauts.”

Goddard’s work is visionary in retrospect, but he was ridiculed by his contemporaries for his steadfast belief in the feasibility of leaving Earth to explore new frontiers. For example, The New York Times ran an editorial in 1920 with the following sneering critique:

"Professor Goddard, with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react — to say that would be absurd. Of course, he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."

This led to a famous correction by the paper after Apollo 11 landed the first humans on the Moon in July 1969. "It is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere," the editors said. "The Times regrets the error."

He was animated not only by scientific curiosity but by a profound vision he had as a teenager on October 19, 1899.

“On this day I climbed a tall cherry tree at the back of the barn... and as I looked toward the fields at the east, I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow at my feet,” Goddard wrote of the experience in his diary.

“I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended,” he said. “Existence at last seemed very purposive.”

For the rest of his life, Goddard celebrated October 19 as his “Anniversary Day,” a personal tribute to his lofty aspirations. On March 17, 1926, the day after the successful flight, he was finally able to record an equally momentous diary entry: His rocket “looked almost magical as it rose,” Goddard recalled, “without any appreciably greater noise or flame, as if it said, ‘I’ve been here long enough; I think I’ll be going somewhere else, if you don’t mind.’”

Goddard didn’t live to see his full vindication at the dawn of spaceflight; he died of throat cancer in 1945 at age 62 in Baltimore. He was survived by his wife, Esther, who had assisted Goddard throughout his career and played a central role in ensuring her husband received credit for his achievements before her death in 1982. The couple is buried together in Worcester.

Goddard’s legacy now lives on through Nell’s countless descendants, including the spectacular Saturn V of the Apollo program and SpaceX’s next-generation Starship. His grit and boundless optimism also live on in his most cited quotation, which he delivered at his high school graduation in 1904 and remains relevant more than a century later.