NASA

National Aeronautics and Space Administration
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Agency overview
Annual budget	$16.3 billion

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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 on July 29, 1958 by the National Aeronautics and Space Act ^[2], its annual funding for Fiscal Year 2007 (FY2007) amounts to US$16.3 billion.^[1]

In addition to the space program, it is also responsible for long-term civilian and military aerospace research. Since February 2006 NASA's self-described mission statement is to "pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research."^[3]

Its motto is per aspera ad astra, Latin for "through hardships to the stars."

History

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 the "Sputnik crisis"), 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, 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, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). A significant contributor 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 after 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 and a quarter-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.^[4]

Skylab

Skylab was the first space station the United States launched into orbit. The 75 metric tonne station was in Earth orbit from 1973 to 1979, and was visited by crews three times, in 1973 and 1974. It included a laboratory for studying the effects of microgravity, and a solar observatory. A Space Shuttle was planned to dock with and elevate Skylab to a higher safe altitude, but Skylab reentered the atmosphere and was destroyed in 1979, before the first shuttle could be launched.

Shuttle era

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.^[5]

The shuttle was not all good news for NASA — flights were much more expensive than initially projected, and even after the 1986 Challenger disaster highlighted the risks of space flight, the public again lost interest as missions appeared to become mundane. Work began on Space Station Freedom as a focus for the manned space program but within NASA there was argument that these projects came at the expense of more inspiring unmanned missions such as the Voyager probes. The Challenger disaster, aside from the late 1980s, marked a low point for NASA.

Nonetheless, the shuttle has been used to launch milestone projects like the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The HST was created with a relatively small budget of $2 billion but has continued operation since 1990 and has delighted both scientists and the public. Some of the images it has returned have become near-legendary, such as the groundbreaking Hubble Deep Field images. The HST is a joint project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, and its success has paved the way for greater collaboration between the agencies.

In 1995 Russian-American interaction would again be achieved as the Shuttle-Mir missions began, and once more an American vehicle docked with a Russian craft (this time a full-fledged space station). This cooperation continues to the present day, with Russia and America the two biggest partners in the largest space station ever built – the International Space Station (ISS). The strength of their cooperation on this project was even more evident when NASA began relying on Russian launch vehicles to service the ISS following the 2003 Columbia disaster, which grounded the shuttle fleet for well over two years.

Costing over one hundred billion dollars, it has been difficult at times for NASA to justify the ISS. The population at large have historically been hard to impress with details of scientific experiments in space, preferring news of grand projects to exotic locations. Even now, the ISS cannot accommodate as many scientists as planned.

During much of the 1990s, NASA was faced with shrinking annual budgets due to Congressional belt-tightening in Washington, DC. In response, NASA's ninth administrator, Daniel S. Goldin, pioneered the "faster, better, cheaper" approach that enabled NASA to cut costs while still delivering a wide variety of aerospace programs (Discovery Program). That method was criticized and re-evaluated following the twin losses of Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander in 1999. Yet, NASA's shuttle program had made 116 successful launches as of December 2006.

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.

NASA's future

NASA's ongoing investigations include in-depth surveys of Mars and Saturn and studies of the Earth and Sun. Other NASA spacecraft are presently en route to Mercury and Pluto. With missions to Jupiter in planning stages, NASA's itinerary covers over half the solar system.

Scheduled to launch in 2007, Phoenix will search for possible underground water courses in the northern Martian pole. This lander revives much of its experiments and instrumentation from the failed 1999 Mars Polar Lander, hence its name. An improved and larger rover, the Mars Science Laboratory, is under construction and slated to launch in 2009. On the horizon of NASA's plans are two possibilities under consideration for the Mars 2011 mission.

The New Horizons mission to Pluto was launched in 2006 and will fly by Pluto in 2015. The probe will receive a gravity assist from Jupiter in February 2007, and will examine some of Jupiter's inner moons during the fly-by.

Vision for space exploration

On January 14, 2004, ten days after the landing of the Mars Exploration Rover 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.

File:Orion Selection.jpg

Orion Contractor Selected Aug. 31, 2006, at NASA Headquarters

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.

Mission statement

From 2002, NASA’s mission statement, used in budget and planning documents, read: “To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can.” In early February 2006, the statement was altered, with the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” deleted.^[6] Some outside observers believe the change is related to criticism of government policy on global warming by NASA scientists like James Hansen, but NASA officials have denied any such connection, pointing to new priorities for space exploration. The chair and ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs wrote NASA Administrator Griffin on July 31, 2006 expressing concerns about the change.^[7] NASA also canceled or delayed a number of earth science missions in 2006.^[8]

Moon base

On December 4, 2006, NASA announced they were planning to build a permanent moon base.^[9] NASA Associate Administrator Scott Horowitz said the goal was to start building the moonbase by 2020, and by 2024, they expect to have continued presence at the base with crew rotations like the International Space Station. Additionally, NASA plans to collaborate and partner with other nations for this project.^[10]

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.

The Cassini probe, launched in 1997 and in orbit around Saturn since mid-2004, is investigating Saturn and its inner satellites. With over twenty years in the making, Cassini-Huygens is an example of international cooperation between JPL-NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Built entirely by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA, NASA probes have been continually performing science at Mars since 1997, with at least two orbiters since 2001 and several Mars rovers. The orbiting Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will continue monitoring the geology and climate of the Red Planet, as well as searching for evidence of past or present water and life, as they have since 2001 and 2006, respectively. If the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft's nine-year lifetime is typical, these probes will continue to advance our knowledge for years to come. The Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity have been traversing the surface of Mars at Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum since early 2004, and will continue to image and investigate those environments. They have both already operated over ten times longer than expected, and remain a promising part of NASA's future.

Field installations

NASA's headquarters is located in Washington, D.C.

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:

F-8 Crusader, Several F-8Cs were used by NASA in the early 1970s to test such features as Digital Fly-By-Wire Control System and supercritical wings, which have become standard on modern high performance military aircraft.
F-104 Starfighter, Three F-104Gs delivered to NASA in 1963 for use as high speed chase aircraft and designated F-104N. One of these aircraft, piloted by Joe Walker, collided with the XB-70 Valkyrie experimental bomber on June 8, 1966.
F-106 Delta Dart, Beginning in the late 1980s handful of F-106A's were retained by NASA for test purposes, the last being retired in 1998.
F-16 Fighting Falcon, During the late 1980s and early 1990s 2 prototypes of the F-16XL, designed as a competitor to the F-15E Strike Eagle in the USAF's Enhanced Tactical Fighter program, were taken in hand by NASA for aeronautical research.
T-38 Talon, a number have been used by NASA as jet trainers for its astronauts since the 1960s; NASA's T-38 fleet is housed primarily at Ellington Field in Houston, Texas.
P-3 Orion, NASA currently uses the P-3 as an earth-science suborbital research platform and is located at Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia.
KC-135 Stratotanker, Two ex-USAF KC-135's were used by NASA from 1973 to 2004 for the Reduced Gravity Research Program, where potential astronauts are exposed to simulated near-weightlessness. It was these aircraft that collectively gained the name Vomit Comet.
C-5 Galaxy, two specially designed C-5C's were procured by NASA for use as a heavy transport aircraft and flown by USAF crews.
C-141 Starlifter, in the early 1960s a single C-141A was procured by NASA for use as a heavy transport aircraft. The Kuiper Airborne Observatory, a modified C-141A, was operated from 1974 to 1995.
C-9 Skytrain II, One ex-USN C-9B was taken in hand in 2004 to replace the famous KC-135s used in NASA's Reduced Gravity Research Program.
Boeing 747, Two 747's, one registered N905NA (which is a 747-100 model that was acquired from American Airlines in 1974) and a second registered N911NA (a 747-100SR model purchased from Japan Airlines in 1988) are currently used by NASA as Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.
U-2 Dragon Lady, Two U-2's have been modified to the ER-2 (Earth Resources -2) standard and are currently in use at Dryden Flight Research Center for use in various high altitude research projects.
X-15, a rocketplane which flew from 1959 to 1968. Conceived by NACA, three were built and explored the regime of hypersonic flight. It is often regarded as a direct predecessor to the Space Shuttle.
Convair 990, Nicknamed Galileo, it was used as an airborne laboratory for research in aeronautics, astronautics, astronomy, and earth observations. The Galileo I aircraft perished in a mid-air collision in 1973. The Galileo II continued service into the 1980s.
Lockheed SR-71,
General Dynamics WB-57F, Two General Dynamics longwing modifications of the Martin B-57 Canberra are currently operating from Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center as high altitude research platforms for atmospheric research and Space Shuttle monitoring.

Related legislation

1958 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration PL 85-568 (passed on July 29)
1961 – Apollo mission funding PL 87-98 A
1970 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration Research and Development Act PL 91-119
1984 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act PL 98-361
1988 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act PL 100-685
2005 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2005
NASA Budget 1958– 2005 in 1996 Constant Year Dollars

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 U.S. Congress' reduction of the NASA budget following project Apollo, the space agency has maintained a top-heavy bureaucracy resulting in inflated costs and compromised hardware. ^{[citation needed]}

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 mitigated by building Shuttle Endeavour 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 (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), have expressed concern over the completion of the ISS. However, with the July 4, 2006 launch of STS-121 Discovery, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has proclaimed the ISS schedule as "on-track."

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. The highest award is the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, which has been award to 28 individuals (17 posthumously), and is said to recognize "any astronaut who in the performance of his duties has distinguished himself by exceptionally meritorious efforts and contributions to the welfare of the Nation and mankind."

The second highest NASA award is the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, which may be presented to any member of the federal government, including both military astronauts and civilian employees. It is an annual award, given out at the National Aeronautics Space Foundation plant, located in Orlando, Florida.