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[edit] Atb129's Sanbox

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[edit] Currently: NASA

To do: Add history, clean up lists, add more current info.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an agency of the United States Government, responsible for the nation's public space program. Established in early 1957 almost a full year before the public announcement of the National Aeronautics and Space Act,[1], its annual funding amounts to $16 billion. In addition to the space program, it is also responsible for long-term civilian and military aerospace research. NASA is widely regarded as the forefront leader of space agencies worldwide.

[edit] History

[edit] Space Race

Main article: Space Race

May 5, 1961 launch of Redstone rocket and NASA's Mercury spacecraft #7 Freedom 7 with Alan Shepard Jr. on the United States' first human flight into sub-orbital space. (Atlas rockets were used to launch Mercury's orbital missions.)

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 nonmilitary activity in space. On July 29, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act 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 8,000 employees of the government's 46-year-old research agency for aeronautics, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), though probably the most important contribution actually had its roots in the German rocket program led by Wernher von Braun, who 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 were 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 humans.

[edit] Apollo program

Main article: Project Apollo

The Apollo program was the culmination of NASA's space race efforts and marked the first time men had landed on the moon. Consisting of actual missions 7-17 as well as experimental missions 1-6, it used the Saturn booster rocket to launch the command, service, and, in some missions, lunar modules. The program was marred by accident from the start: Apollo 1 caught fire during a pre-launch test, killing all three astronauts aboard. Following five unmanned tests NASA launched the first manned mission, Apollo 7, in 1968, which orbited the Earth. Apollo 8 orbited the Moon, followed by Apollos 9 and 10, which tested the lunar module.

Apollo 11, manned by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, successfully landed on the moon on July 20th, 1969, fulfilling President John F. Kennedy's declaration eight years earlier. They were followed by Apollos 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17. Apollo 13 would have landed on the moon, but suffered mechanical problems and was only able to orbit the moon before returning back to Earth.

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.^[1]

[edit] Post-Apollo, Pre-Space Shuttle

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.

[edit] Unmanned 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.

NASA has supervised several Martian missions to date, the first of these being the series of Mariner missions which flew by the planet. The two Viking probes landed on the surface of the planet and sent color images back to Earth in the 1970s, which are still iconic today. More recently, the Mars Global Surveyor, in 1996, mapped the planet, while in 1997 the Mars Pathfinder mission landed on the planet and deployed the Sojurner rover. After a string of bad luck (most famously, Lockheed engineers mixed imperial and metric units, resulting in the crash of the Mars Climate Orbiter, the agency sent the Mars Odyssey orbiter, and then, in 2006, the twin Mars Exploration Rovers, to explore the planet.

NASA is also remembered for a string of missions which explored the outer solar system: the Pioneer and particularly Voyager missions that visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune sending back scientific information and color images. Several of these space craft have passed the planets and are now in the process of leaving the solar system. The Galileo and Cassini-Huygens mission also visited Jupiter, with the latter landing a probe (Huygens) on the surface of Jupiter's largest moon, Titan.

The latest missions, such as the Mars rovers, are a new class of missions called the Discovery Program, which aim to be more low-cost and more efficient. Other past missions include Deep Impact, Stardust, and NEAR Shoemaker. Future missions include Dawn and the New Horizons mission, which will study Pluto in depth.

NASA also operates many satellites in space which are aimed at studying the Earth, as well as satellites such as the Hubble Space Telescope that look outwards into space.

[edit] Space Shuttle and ISS

Space Shuttle Columbia, April 12, 1981

The space shuttle became the major focus of NASA in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Planned to be a frequently launchable and mostly reusable vehicle, four space shuttles were built by 1985. The first to launch, Columbia, did so on April 12, 1981.^[2]

NASA's shuttle program has made over 112 successful launches since that point, with many different successess such as the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as dozens of other satellites, along with sveral missions to the Russian Space Station Mir However it was not all good news - NASA has suffered two disasters with the space shuttle, the first on January 28, 1986, when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just after launch. The second on February 1, 2003, which brokeup during reentry into the atmosphere. In addition, the Space Shuttle has cost significantly more than predicted.

In 1998, the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, and the countries of the ESA entered into an agreement to build an International Space Station in Earth orbit. The first component was delivered in 1998, and many more have been delivered since. However, the completion date was significantly pushed back after the Columbia disaster, as the Space Shuttle is the main transportation vehicle for new modules.

[edit] 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.

Florida, USA, taken from NASA Shuttle Mission STS-95 on October 31, 1998.

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."

[edit] Notable NASA spaceflight missions

See List of NASA Spaceflight Missions for a complete list

[edit] Human spaceflight

Mercury program
Gemini program
Apollo program
Apollo-Soyuz (Soviet Union partnership)
Skylab
Space Shuttle
Shuttle-Mir Program (Russian partnership)
International Space Station (working together with Russia, Canada, ESA, and JAXA along with co-operators, ASI and Brazil)
Orion Program

[edit] Satellite and Robotic space missions

Earth Observing

Mariner 10

Magellan

Viking 1 and 2

Mars Pathfinder

Mars Exploration Rovers

Galileo

Cassini-Huygens together with ESA

New Horizons

Multi-planet missions
- Pioneer 11 – Jupiter and Saturn
- Mariner 10 – Venus and Mercury
- Voyager 1 – Jupiter and Saturn
- Voyager 2 – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune

Hubble Space Telescope – ESA partnership

[edit] List of NASA administrators

T. Keith Glennan (1958–1961)
James E. Webb (1961–1968)
Thomas O. Paine (1969–1970)
James C. Fletcher (1971–1977)
Robert A. Frosch (1977–1981)
James M. Beggs (1981–1985)
James C. Fletcher (1986–1989)
Richard H. Truly (1989–1992)
Daniel S. Goldin (1992–2001)
Sean O'Keefe (2001–2005)
Michael D. Griffin (2005–)

[edit] Field installations

For a full list, see List of NASA Field Installations

NASA's headquarters are located in Washington, DC. Prinicipal installations include the John F. Kennedy Space Center, the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

[edit] Awards and decorations

For a full list, see List of NASA 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 include, most prominantly, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. A full list can be found at the link above.

[edit] See also

For links to other space agencies, see the bottom of the page.

[edit] References

^ Chaikin, Andrew A Man On The Moon
^ Bernier, Serge (Stephen Lyle Translator) Space Odyssey: The First Forty Years of Space Exploration (Cambridge University Press, 2002) ISBN 0-521-81356-5