National Aeronautics and Space Administration

I

Introduction

National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA, an agency of the United States government, established by the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. The functions of the organization are to plan, direct, and conduct all US aeronautical and space activities, except those that are primarily military. The administrator of NASA is appointed from civilian life by the president, with the advice and consent of the US Senate. The administration arranges for participation by the scientific community in planning scientific measurements and observations to be made by means of aeronautical and space vehicles, and provides for dissemination of information concerning results. With the advent of the space shuttle programme, NASA more frequently became involved in military activities despite the original intention that it should be a civilian agency. Because of the long delay caused by the 1986 Challenger disaster, however, the US military started expanding its own fleet of booster rockets.

II

Structure

NASA is based in Washington, D.C., and reports financially to the United States president. There are currently five main branches of NASA: the Office of Aero-Space Technology, the Office of Earth Science, the Office of Space Flight, the Office of Life and Microgravity Sciences and Applications, and the Office of Space Science. NASA employs thousands of scientists, engineers, and technicians at its major installations across the country. These facilities include the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida; the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas; the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; and the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

III

Background

Founded in 1958, NASA replaced the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) that was created by the United States Congress in 1915. NASA absorbed all of the various aviation and military space organizations already established, enabling a single agency to coordinate efforts effectively between all interested parties: scientists, engineers, universities, and politicians.

IV

Early Space Exploration

NASA grew out of what became known as the “space race” between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) to create a rocket that could reach space and, ultimately, the Moon and perhaps Mars. Soviet scientists scored the first victory on October 4, 1957, when they launched the artificial satellite, Sputnik (later referred to as Sputnik 1), into orbit around Earth. The USSR went on to record several more historic firsts, including a series of dramatic achievements that culminated on April 12, 1961, when cosmonaut Yury Gagarin became the first human to orbit the planet in a spacecraft. Just a few weeks later, on May 5, the United States launched its first piloted spacecraft in which astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr., made a suborbital flight (a complete orbit of Earth was not made).

Under both President John F. Kennedy and his successor Lyndon Johnson, NASA was given sufficient financial resources to improve space operations, development, and research. On February 20, 1962, a Mercury rocket carried John Glenn around Earth three times. In 1963 the Mercury programme gave way to the Gemini programme, which would send two astronauts into space in a bigger and better version of the Mercury spacecraft. The Gemini programme was phased out in 1967 by the Apollo programme, a $25-billion project devoted to fulfilling President Kennedy’s goal of landing a US astronaut on the Moon by the end of the decade. In May 1969 Apollo 10 came within 15,240 m (50,000 ft) of the Moon’s surface. Two months later, on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human being to walk on the Moon.

Five more Apollo missions reached the Moon. The only failed mission occurred in 1970 when technical problems forced Apollo 13 to return to Earth before landing on the Moon. Apollo’s final Moon mission was completed in December 1972. The economic recession of the mid-1970s and the political climate at the time caused a sharp drop in NASA’s funding. Still, in 1973 NASA managed to launch its first space station, Skylab, where astronauts could work and live in space for several months. The agency also landed two unpiloted spacecraft on Mars: Viking 1 on July 20, 1976, and Viking 2 six weeks later on September 3.