Happy 50th Birthday NASA!

NASA is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.  It was officially created on October 1st, 1958.  Before that, it was the armed forces (army and navy) that had responsibility for the rocketry and space sciences.  

The first successful launch of an American satellite was the January 1958 Explorer I spacecraft, about three months after the Soviet Union launch the very first successful orbital satellite, Sputnik I, and about two months after the Soviets put the first living thing into orbit around the earth, a dog named Laika.  She was a stray Siberian husky, around three years old. She was strapped in, and had access to food and water, and many probes attached to monitor her vital signs. However, there was no attempt made to return the dog safely to Earth. She died in space when her air supply was exhausted. The spacecraft later fell into the atmosphere and burned.  There is a monument to Laika and other fallen cosmonauts in Russia.

It's pretty incredible that it was only about ten years later that the first humans escaped the Earth's gravity and travelled to the moon in Apollo 8, launched by the United States in 1968.  From 1969 to 1972, the United States landed twelve humans on the moon and returned them safely. Since then, we have relied on robotic missions to explore space beyond a low earth orbit. 

Examples of some of these unmanned probes include the Voyagers, launched in the 1970's and just now approaching the edges of our solar system; the robotic explorers of Mars, Opportunity and Spirit, and the recent Phoenix probe; The Hubble Space Telescope; and many many more.  

NASA is currently collaborating with fifteen other countries on the International Space Station.