NASA's National Aeronautics and Space Administration UNITED STATES SPACE AGENCY

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), independent U.S. governmental agency established in 1958 for the research and development of vehicles and activities for the exploration of space within and outside Earth’s atmosphere…..

….The organization is composed of four mission directorates: Aeronautics Research, for the development of advanced aviation technologies; Science, dealing with programs for understanding the origin, structure., and evolution of the universe, the solar system, and Earth; Space Technology, for the development of space science and exploration technologies; and Human Exploration and Operations, concerning the management. of crewed space missions, including those to the International Space Station, as well as operations related to launch services, space transportation, and space communications for both crewed and robotic exploration programs. A number of additional research centers are affiliated, including the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California; the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas; and the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Headquarters of NASA are in Washington, D.C….

…NASA was created largely in response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik in 1957. It was organized around the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which had been created by Congress in 1915. NASA’s organization was well under way by the early years of Pres. John F. Kennedy’s administration when he proposed that the United States put a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. To that end, the Apollo program was designed, and in 1969 the U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person on the Moon. Later, unscrewed programs—such as Viking, Mariner, Voyager, and Galileo—explored other bodies of the solar system…..

…NASA was also responsible for the development and launching of a number of satellites with Earth applications, such as Landsat, a series of satellites designed to collect information on natural resources and other Earth features; communications satellites..; and weather satellites. It also planned and developed the space shuttle, a reusable vehicle capable of carrying out missions that could not be conducted with conventional spacecraft…..