Since viewers first heard the tagline, "… to boldly go where no man has gone before," "Star Trek" has represented the hope of what space — "the final frontier" — can mean for humanity in a few centuries. First airing in 1966, the show became a phenomenon, spawning spinoff TV series, movies, books and games, and influencing culture and technology.
The franchise mostly follows the adventures of crews on the USS Enterprise, although some iterations took detours on space stations or other ships. Humanity is just one of a vast number of alien species participating in a quasi-military organization called Starfleet, whose main goal is to explore the universe for scientific reasons. Starfleet is an arm of the United Federation of Planets, which has a strict rule about interfering with the development of more primitive species. This "prime directive" sounds similar to NASA's planetary protection protocols for worlds that may host microbial life.
