National Aeronautics and Space Administration



The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is a United States agency that was established on established::October 1, 1958 to conduct research and space exploration. Today it is the foremost among government agencies that manage space programs, and is credited with some of the most exciting and surprising astronomical discoveries ever made.

Precursor
The precursor to NASA was the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. This began on March 3, 1915 as an advisory committee to the President of the United States. NACA was responsible for guiding aviation research and development. It provided invaluable assistance for the development of American military and commercial aircraft. NACA is most notable for the first flight faster than sound and, unfortunately, for a failed rocket program.

Crisis
In 1958, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik I. The United States Congress, unwilling to allow a Soviet presence in space to remain unchallenged, authorized the creation of NASA in 1958. NASA inherited NACA's original assets and gained a new mission: to create a successful rocket program aimed at placing not merely orbiting satellites, but men into space.

Project Mercury
Project Mercury involved sending a single man into space. The chief objective of the program was to demonstrate that America could, at need, develop a low-earth-orbit strategic bomber as well as the Soviets could. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty obviated this objective.

Projects Gemini and Apollo
Project Gemini, in which two-man crews entered space, emphasized the development of techniques and technologies to support exploration. After twelve successful missions, NASA began Project Apollo with the explicit goal of exploring the Moon. The first crew to land on the moon was that of Apollo 11, on July 20, 1969. NASA sent six more three-man crews to the Moon, of which five succeeded in landing, taking photographs and samples, and returning.

Further projects
Project Apollo was the last of the primarily exploratory missions. From December of 1972 to the present, all of NASA's efforts involving humans in space have concentrated on two classes of missions:


 * Endurance and laboratory experimentation in a microgravity environment.
 * The transportation of loads requiring delicate handling. This includes the Hubble Space Telescope. In fact, several Space Transport System ("Shuttle") crews have made rendezvous with the Hubble Space Telescope in order to repair it after launch. Other heavy and delicate loads include various modules for the International Space Station.

Currently NASA intends to resume exploration by human beings in 2015.

Robotic rocket probes
Ironically, NASA's success in developing systems to support and steer a vessel carrying a human crew in space has led to the development of rocket probes that have conducted highly sophisticated explorations of far-off bodies in the solar system without human crews. This has led some scientists to question the need for human crews to fly any class of space mission.

The most productive rocket-probe missions, in approximate chronological order, include:


 * Project Mariner (exploration of Venus and Mars)
 * Project Magellan (exploration of Venus)
 * Project Pioneer (exploration of Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn)
 * Project Viking (exploration of Mars)
 * Project Voyager (exploration of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune)
 * Deep Impact mission (reconnaissance of a comet)
 * Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission (landing on the asteroid Eros)
 * Mars Excursion Rover missions (landing on Mars)
 * Galileo project (exploration of Jupiter and its moons)
 * Cassini-Huygens mission (exploration of Saturn and its moons)
 * Messenger (exploration of Mercury)
 * Dawn mission (exploration of the dwarf planet Ceres and the asteroid Vesta)
 * New Horizons mission (exploration of the dwarf planet Pluto and its moons, and possibly other Kuiper belt objects)
 * Phoenix lander (landing on Mars)

National Space Science Data Center
The National Space Science Data Center is NASA's central space mission data archive. The Center furnishes raw data and images upon request to scientists and non-scientists.

International Designator
The NSSDC also assigns unique identifiers, called International Designators, to every artificial satellite in orbit and every successful launch of a rocket probe, except for secret (usually military) payloads. A standard designator contains the launch year (AD), a three-digit launch number, and a one- to three-letter code identifying a separate payload, launch vehicle, or part of such vehicle.

NASA graphics
NASA is a rich source of high-quality images of space and especially of various solar system bodies. Because NASA is an agency of the United States government, all images specifically credited to NASA are in the public domain, as per the Copyright Act of 1977.

However, the logo of NASA may not be used to promote any agency or project other than NASA or one of its subsidiary or partner agencies. The use of the NASA logo in an article to describe the history, function, and achievements of NASA is allowed under the principle of fair use. But no other use of this logo is permitted without the express approval of NASA.