On the ninth fairway at the Pakachoag Golf Course in Auburn, Massachusetts, lies a small granite obelisk commemorating the dawn of the space age. 

It was there, on March 16, 1926, that Robert Goddard carried out the first successful launch of a liquid-fueled rocket: a 10 foot cylinder that flew for just two and half seconds to an altitude of 41 feet before plummeting to the surrounding farmland.

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Supriya Chakrabarti, a professor of physics, is director of the Lowell Center for Space and Technology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.