NASA full form is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It is an independent agency that is in charge of the United States Federal Government’s civil space program as well as aeronautics and space sciences. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established it on October 1, 1958, through the National Aeronautics and Space Act. It focuses on creating peaceful space science technologies rather than military ones and is in charge of U.S. aerospace and space exploration research and technology.
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Vision of NASA: Exploration and consciousness expansion for the benefit of humanity
NASA is led by administrators. After roughly July 2019, Jim Bridenstine became the 13th administrator of NASA, and James W. Morhard became the 14th deputy administrator. The agency consists of four research divisions:
- Aeronautics Research to advance modern aircraft technologies.
- Science that seeks to comprehend the origin, nature, and evolution of the universe, solar system, and Earth.
- To create space research and exploration technology using space technology.
- Human exploration and activities involved with crew project management, such as the International Space Station, as well as launching services, space transportation, and space communications for both crewed and robotic exploration missions.
Associated research centers include 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 Centre in Hampton, Virginia. The NASA headquarters are located in Washington, D.C.
NASA Space Flight Programs
NASA has conducted a number of crewed and uncrewed spaceflight missions throughout its history. Unmanned missions launched the first American artificial satellites into Earth’s orbit for study and communications reasons, and despatched research probes to explore the solar system’s planets, beginning with Venus and Mars and culminating with grand tours of the outer planets.
List of Crewed programs
- X to 15 rocket plane in 1959 to1968.
- Project Mercury from 1958 to 1963.
- Project Gemini from 1961 to 1966.
- Apollo program from 1961 to 1972.
- Skylab from 1965 to 1979.
- Apollo to Soyuz Test Project from 1972 to 1975.
- Space Shuttle program from 1972 to 2011.
- International Space Station from 1993 to present.
List of Uncrewed programs
- Explorer 1 to First U.S Uncrewed satellite (1958)
- Pioneer 10 to First spacecraft to visit Jupiter(1973).
- Pioneer 11 to First spacecraft to visit Saturn (1979)
- Voyager 2 to First spacecraft to visit Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989 respectively.
Event to Real and Expected
- NASA launched a crewed trip back to the Moon in 2009, forty years after the first lunar landing. After three years of construction, the Neil A. Armstrong Lunar Outpost was completed in 2012 by astronauts. The Outpost will enable crew travel to more distant Solar System destinations.
- In 2015, NASA astronauts successfully landed on AO10 asteroid 1999, which was newly found.
- In 2020 or 2021, there is also a proposal to send a crewed landing mission to Mars.
- The Venus In Situ Explorer, which will launch in 2022, is an uncrewed mission.
- NASA and ESA will launch a cooperative Uranus Pathfinder mission in 2025, and the Neptune Orbiter was launched in 2016.
