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Space race Following the Soviet space program's launch of the world's first man-made satellite (Sputnik 1) on October 4, 1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. The U.S. Congress, alarmed by the perceived threat to U.S. security and technological leadership (known as "Sputnik Shock"), urged immediate and swift action; President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his advisors counseled more deliberate measures. Several months of debate produced agreement that a new federal agency was needed to conduct all non-military activity in space. On July 29, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act or NASA, establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). When it began operations on October 1, 1958, NASA consisted mainly of the four laboratories and some 80 employees of the government's 46-year-old research agency for aeronautics, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). A significant contibutor to NASA's entry into the Space race was the technology from the German rocket program, led by Wernher von Braun, who became a naturalized citizen of the United States near the end of World War II. He is today regarded as the father of the United States space program. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (of which von Braun's team was a part) and the Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA. NASA's earliest programs involved research into human spaceflight and were conducted under the pressure of the competition between the USA and the USSR (the Space Race) that existed during the Cold War. The Mercury program, initiated in 1958, started NASA down the path of human space exploration with missions designed to discover simply if man could survive in space. Representatives from the U.S. Army (M.L. Raines, LTC, USA), Navy (P.L. Havenstein, CDR, USN) and Air Force (K.G. Lindell, COL, USAF) were selected/requested to provide assistance to the NASA Space Task Group through coordination with the existing U.S. military research and defense contracting infrastructure, and technical assistance resulting from experimental aircraft (and the associated military test pilot pool) development in the 1950s. On May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. became the first American in space when he piloted ''Freedom 7'' on a 15-minute suborbital flight. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962 during the 5-hour flight of ''Friendship 7''. Once the Mercury project proved that human spaceflight was possible, project Gemini was launched to conduct experiments and work out issues relating to a moon mission. The first Gemini flight with astronauts on board, Gemini III, was flown by Virgil "Gus" Grissom and John W. Young on March 23, 1965. Nine other missions followed, showing that long-duration human space flight was possible, proving that rendezvous and docking with another vehicle in space was possible, and gathering medical data on the effects of weightlessness on human beings. Apollo program The Apollo program was designed to land humans on the Moon and bring them safely back to Earth. Six of the missions (Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17) did achieve this goal. Apollo 7 and Apollo 9 were Earth orbiting missions and were designed to test the operating systems of the Command and Lunar Modules including rendezvous radar and essential life support systems. Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 tested various components while orbiting the Moon, and returned photography of the lunar surface. Apollo 13 did not land on the Moon due to a malfunction, but also returned photographs. The six missions that landed on the Moon returned a wealth of scientific data and almost 400 kilograms of lunar samples. Experiments included soil mechanics, meteoroids, seismic, heat flow, lunar ranging, magnetic fields, and solar wind experiments. Other early missions Although the vast majority of NASA's budget has been spent on human spaceflight, there have been many robotic missions instigated by the space agency. In 1962 the Mariner 2 mission was launched and became the first spacecraft to make a flyby of another planet – in this case Venus. The Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter missions were essential to assessing lunar conditions before attempting Apollo landings with humans on board. Later, the two Viking probes landed on the surface of Mars and sent color images back to Earth, but perhaps more impressive were the Pioneer and particularly Voyager missions that visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune sending back scientific information and color images. Having lost the moon race, the Soviet Union had, along with the USA, changed its approach. On July 17, 1975 Apollo 18 (finding a new use after the cancelling of planned lunar flights) was docked to the Soviet Soyuz 19 spacecraft, in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Although the Cold War would last many more years, this was a critical point in NASA's history and much of the international co-operation in space exploration that exists today has its genesis with this mission. America's first space station, Skylab, occupied NASA from the end of Apollo until the late 1970s. Shuttle era
NASAs future Utilizing the 30 years of robotic, interplanetary exploration experience from the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), NASA's current investigations include in-depth surveys of Mars. The Mars Global Surveyor probe has been performing science in Mars orbit from 1997 to date. Since 2001, the orbiting Mars Odyssey has been searching for evidence of past or present water and volcanic activity on the red planet. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which reached Mars in 2006, will continue investigations of Martian climate and geology. Both built and managed by JPL, the most spectacular missions, however, have been the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which have been traversing the surface of Mars at Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum since early 2004, returning thousands of images and other scientific data. With NASA funding, JPL expects to continue to explore the Red Planet with more spacecraft such as ''Phoenix'' and the Mars Science Laboratory later this decade. Scheduled to launch in 2007, Phoenix shall search for possible underground water courses in the northern Martian pole. The name "Phoenix" is appropriately given. During the dark days (accidents) of Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander, the prime contractor to JPL -- Lockheed Martin, Denver -- mothballed an identical Mars Polar Lander. With the success of the Mars Exploration Rovers, JPL and Lockheed Martin have "revived" the Mars mission to search for underground water in the northern poles. Hence, the name "Phoenix" was given to the "un-mothballed" identical, Mars Polar Lander probe. Other notable JPL-NASA missions include the Cassini probe, launched in 1997 and in orbit around Saturn since mid-2004, investigating Saturn and its inner satellites; and the New Horizons mission, launched 2006 and due to reach Pluto in 2015. With over twenty years in the making, Cassini-Huygens demonstrates the importance of international cooperation between JPL-NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, which killed the crew of six Americans and one Israeli, caused a 29-month hiatus in space shuttle flights and triggered a serious re-examination of NASA's priorities. The U.S. government, various scientists, and the public all considered the future of the space program. On January 14, 2004, ten days after the landing of Spirit, President George W. Bush announced a new plan for NASA's future, dubbed the Vision for Space Exploration. According to this plan, humankind will return to the moon by 2018, and set up outposts as a testbed and potential resource for future missions. The space shuttle will be retired in 2010 and Orion will replace it by 2014, capable of both docking with the ISS and leaving the Earth's orbit. The future of the ISS is somewhat uncertain — construction will be completed, but beyond that is less clear. Although the plan initially met with skepticism from Congress, in late 2004 Congress agreed to provide start-up funds for the first year's worth of the new space vision. Hoping to spur innovation from the private sector, NASA established a series of Centennial Challenges, technology prizes for non-government teams, in 2004. The Challenges include tasks that will be useful for implementing the Vision for Space Exploration, such as building more efficient astronaut gloves. Criticisms Some commentators, such as Mark Wade, note that NASA has suffered from a 'stop-start' approach to its human spaceflight programs. The Apollo spacecraft and Saturn family of launch vehicles were abandoned in the 1970s after billions of dollars had been spent on their development. In 2004 the U.S. Government proposed eventually replacing the Shuttle with a Crew Exploration Vehicle that would allow the agency to again send astronauts to the Moon. Despite the reduction of its budget following project Apollo, NASA has maintained a top-heavy bureaucracy resulting in inflated costs and compromised hardware. Currently, the ISS relies on the Shuttle fleet for all major construction shipments. The Shuttle fleet has lost two spacecraft and fourteen astronauts in two disasters in 1986 and 2003. While the 1986 loss was made up with a space shuttle built from replacement parts, NASA does not plan to build another shuttle to replace the second loss. (See also CEV.) The ISS, which was intended to have a crew of seven as of 2005, just now has been restored to a crew of three for the first time since it was cut to a skeleton crew of two in May 2003, causing many intended research projects to be delayed. However, Anatoli Perminov, director of Roskosmos, told Russian news agency Itar-Tass that from 2009 there would be six permanent crew members on board the station. Since the Columbia Shuttle accident, the permanent space station crew has comprised one Russian and one American, on board for six months at a time, meaning European and Japanese astronauts could not stay for longer missions. An increase in the number of crew members has been in the pipeline for some time but was delayed following the Columbia disaster in February 2003. Other nations that have invested heavily in the space station's construction, such as the members of the European Space Agency and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, have expressed concern over the completion of the ISS. However, with the July 4th, 2006 launch of STS-121 "Discovery," NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has proclaimed the ISS schedule as "on-track." NASA spaceflight missions NASA has had many successful space missions and programs, including over 100 manned missions. The many notable manned missions have been from the Apollo program, which were a sequence of missions to the moon, and included the achievement of the first man to walk on the moon, during Apollo 11. The Space Shuttle Program has also been a huge success with, despite the loss of two of the Space Shuttles, ''Challenger'' and ''Columbia'' which resulted in the deaths of their entire crews. The Space Shuttles were able to dock with the space station Mir while it was operational, and are now able to dock with the International Space Station - a joint project of many space agencies. NASA's future plans for space exploration are with the Project Constellation. There have been many unmanned NASA space missions as well, including at least one that visited each of the other 7 planets in our solar system, and four missions (Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, and Voyager 2) that have left our solar system. There has been much recent success with the missions to Mars, including the Mars Exploration Rovers, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. List of NASA administrators Field installations NASA's headquarters are located in Washington, DC. NASA's Shared Services center is located on the grounds of the John C. Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Construction of their facility began in August 2006 and the scheduled completion date is October 2007. NASA has field and research installations listed below by application. Some facilities serve more than one application due to historical or administrative reasons. Research centers Test facilities Construction and launch facilities Deep Space Network Deep Space Network (DSN) stations Tourism and museum facilities Aircraft Throughout its history, NASA has used several different types of aircraft on a permanent, semi-permanent, or short-term basis. These aircraft are usually surplus (or in a few cases new-built) military aircraft. Included among these are: Awards and decorations NASA presently bestows a number of medals and decorations to astronauts and other NASA personnel. Some awards are authorized for wear on active duty military uniforms. Current NASA awards are as follows: Related legislation See also Other space agencies General Further research | |||||||||||
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