NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration history

NASA's first logo was designed by the head of Lewis' Research Reports Division, James Modarelli, as a simplification of the 1959 seal.

The project famously received an enormous boost, or you could say mandate when President John F. Kennedy made his now immortal speech on the 25th May 1961.

John Glenn became the first American to be launched into orbit, on an Atlas launch vehicle on February 20, 1962, aboard Friendship 7.

The first crewed Gemini flight, Gemini 3, was flown by Gus Grissom and John Young on March 23, 1965.

On March 16, 1966, Armstrong, as command pilot of Gemini 8, and David R. Scott rendezvoused with an unmanned Agena rocket and completed the first manual space docking maneuver.

Famously there was the Apollo 1 capsule fire in the 27th of January, 1967 that killed all astronauts on board during a launch rehearsal test.

Less than two years later, in October 1968, NASA bounced back with the successful Apollo 7 mission, which orbited the Earth and tested the redesigned Apollo command module.

"That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." Neil A. Armstrong uttered these famous words on July 20, 1969, when the Apollo 11 mission fulfilled Kennedy's challenge by successfully landing Armstrong and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr. on the Moon.

On May 24, 1972, US President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin signed an agreement calling for a joint crewed space mission, and declaring intent for all future international crewed spacecraft to be capable of docking with each other.

In 1975, NASA launched the two Viking spacecraft to look for basic signs of life on the planet Mars.

These were launched on the 5th September 1977 and August 20th, 1977.

The Shuttle's first mission, STS-1, took off on April 12, 1981, demonstrating that it could take off vertically and glide to an unpowered airplane-like landing.

On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space, on board the Space Shuttle Challenger STS-7 mission.

Originally planned as a frequently launchable, fully reusable vehicle, the design was changed to use an expendable external propellant tank to reduce development cost, and four Space Shuttle orbiters were built by 1985.

On January 28, 1986 a leak in the joints of one of two Solid Rocket Boosters attached to the Challenger orbiter caused the main liquid fuel tank to explode 73 seconds after launch, killing all 7 crew members.

In 1989, the Authorization Act added a 9th goal for NASA: “The preservation of the United States preeminent position in aeronautics and space through research and technology development related to associated manufacturing processes.”

1990 saw the launch of the hugely important Hubble Space Telescope into Earth's orbit.

In 1991, after much debate over the station's purpose and budget, NASA released plans for a restructured facility called Space Station Freedom.

Several months before this first HST servicing mission, however, NASA suffered another major disappointment when the Mars Observer spacecraft disappeared on August 21, 1993, just three days before it was to go into orbit around the red planet.

Their first offering was the Mars Global Explorer that launched on November 7th, 1996.

Permanent habitation of the ISS began with the launch of the Expedition One crew on October 31 and the docking on November 2, 2000.

Roger E. Bilstein, Testing Aircraft, Exploring Space: An Illustrated History of NACA and NASA. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins New Series in NASA History, 2003).

On January 14, 2004, President George W. Bush visited NASA Headquarters and announced a new Vision for Space Exploration.

After a thorough investigation and refit of remaining Shuttles, the program began again on the 26th July 2005 with STS-114.

On December 4, 2006, NASA announced it was planning a permanent Moon base.

The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 required a newly designed HLV be chosen within 90 days of its passing; the launch vehicle was given the name Space Launch System.

NASA undertook a feasibility study in 2012 and developed the Asteroid Redirect Mission as an uncrewed mission to move a boulder-sized near-Earth asteroid (or boulder-sized chunk of a larger asteroid) into lunar orbit.

The Orion spacecraft conducted an uncrewed test launch on a Delta IV Heavy rocket in December 2014.

On March 29, 2019, the ISS was scheduled to have its first all-female spacewalk, but it was delayed; Jessica Meir and Christina Koch performed the first all-female spacewalk on October 18, as part of a lengthy series of upgrades to the ISS' power systems and physics observatories.

Deployment is scheduled for launch in May 2020 from French Guiana.

On April 16, 2021, NASA announced they had selected the SpaceX Lunar Starship as its Human Landing System.