historyLetter.html

On October 1, 1958 NASA began operations incorporating earlier National Advisory Council on Aeronautics and other bodies. From the article:

"Like all historical events, the birth of NASA must be placed in the context of its times. Following World War II, the United States was in direct competition with the Soviet Union (the superpower that in 1991 disbanded into several sovereign nations including the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, etc.) for the hearts and minds of people around the world. It was not for the most part a shooting war, but a “Cold War,” a test of two very different systems of government. Technology was one means of measuring success and projecting power, and nothing was more powerful than the intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) being developed in the wake of World War II to deliver warheads.

It was these missiles that brought human technology to the brink of space, and it was the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957, that first put an object into orbit around Earth. Passing overhead with its faint radio signal as people watched and listened, the 183-pound satellite was a powerful symbol. It was followed in November by the even larger Sputnik II, which carried the dog Laika. Only in late January 1958 was the United States able to answer the challenge with Explorer 1, hoisted aloft by the Army’s rocket team led by Wernher von Braun, using rocket technology developed from World War II. Though a small spacecraft weighing only 30 pounds, it discovered what are now known as the Van Allen radiation belts, named for the University of Iowa scientist Dr. James Van Allen, launching the new discipline of space science. Explorer 1 was followed in March by the Navy’s Vanguard 1, 6 inches in diameter and weighing only 3 pounds.

NASA’s birth was directly related to the launch of the Sputniks and the ensuing race to demonstrate technological superiority in space. Driven by the competition of the Cold War, on July 29, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, providing for research into the problems of flight within Earth’s atmosphere and in space. After a protracted debate over military versus civilian control of space, the act inaugurated a new civilian agency designated the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The agency began operations on Oct. 1, 1958.

Godspeed, John Glenn-Liftoff of Friendship 7, the first American manned orbital spaceflight, with astronaut John Glenn aboard on Feb. 20, 1962.NASA began by absorbing the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), including its 8,000 employees, an annual budget of $100 million, three major research laboratories – the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory in Virginia, the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory in California, and the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Ohio – and two smaller test facilities. It quickly incorporated other organizations (or parts of them), notably the space science group of the Naval Research Laboratory that formed the core of the new Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., the Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed by the California Institute of Technology for the Army, and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, Ala., where Wernher von Braun’s team of engineers was developing large rockets.

Within months of its creation, NASA began to conduct space missions, and over the last 50 years has undertaken spectacular programs in human spaceflight, robotic spaceflight, and aeronautics research. NASA today carries on the nation’s long tradition of exploration dating back at least to Lewis and Clark. In addition to its headquarters in Washington, D.C., NASA facilities include 10 centers around the country staffed by nearly 19,000 employees. Its proposed budget for fiscal year 2009 is $17.6 billion."