The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the federal government founded by Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is responsible for aeronautics and aerospace research. This event means that they conduct missions and create modules/equipment used to explore and gain an understanding of outer space. Before the creation of NASA, another federal agency already existed: it was called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), founded on March 3, 1915 by Woodrow Wilson. It was the first agency to represent serious exploration of space and sky exploration. After the launch of Sputnik, NACA was shocked and this led to Dwight Eisenhower's idea to improve the committee if they wanted to compete with the Soviet Union. In 1958, Congress passed legislation to create NASA, created because of the Soviet Union's October 4 launch of Sputnik. , 1957, which started the space race. NACA only had 12 employees and they were successful in airplanes, but later in rocket planes and also saw many advances after WWII, they became more serious with spacecraft. The space race began in 1955 when the United States and the Soviet Union announced the launch of a satellite into orbit. After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 2, the United States launched its own spacecraft, Explorer 1, which was a success. On December 18, 1958, the Air Force booster was sent into orbit, it was a communications satellite to stay in contact with Earth the next day, President Eisenhower's Christmas message was sent and it was the first voice sent from space. In 1972-73, Pioneer 10 and 11 were launched and Pioneer 10 was the first to travel through the solar system's asteroid belt. It also captured astonishing images of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. A year later, Pioneer 11 was launched and flew by Jupiter then moved towards Saturn and that's where we discovered many small moons around the planet. Say no to plagiarism. Get Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the Original Essay Today, NASA has many departments and continued with more missions which gave us what we have today today, with 17,219 employees focused on different aspects of the space. exploration to give the nation its new discoveries and a better understanding of the universe. The engineering department works to design rockets for deep space exploration and build instruments that help them analyze what they have found on a planet or in space. They also have a Space Biosciences research arm that focuses on biological research and technology development to manage the extreme environments of space exploration. Since there is no air, food and water and radiation levels are high in space, this branch will find new, safer ways to explore space without negatively affecting our bodies and our health. NASA's astrophysics branch focuses on discovering how the universe works. This is done by studying the physical and chemical properties of objects by observing their infrared and ultraviolet radiation wavelengths. The Exobiology branch carries out research into the origin, evolution and life in the universe. They are working on instruments designed to measure whether something is habitable and which also detect biosignatures. The last branch that I will mention is the branch ofplanetary systems. In this branch, a group of NASA workers come together to observe, create theories, and experiment in research into the origin of planetary systems. NASA has conducted many missions and created equipment and learned from previous missions mentioned, I want to talk about the successful missions they accomplished. The first will concern an instrument created by NASA called the Hubble Space Telescope. This telescope was launched into Earth's orbit and it reveals stars, planets, nebulae and galaxies. This telescope has truly changed the way people look at space.cosmos. The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) is a spacecraft that measured temperature differences in the cosmic microwave background, which is the radiation left behind by the Big Bang. What this spacecraft revealed was that the universe was 13.7 billion years old and also confirmed that most of the universe, about 95%, is made up of dark matter and energy black. A very important mission that I will mention is Apollo 11, a mission mentioned by John F. Kennedy to achieve a goal. It was a mission to the Moon and it was a major turning point in human history. Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins were the three to participate in this mission. Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the Moon. . When the astronauts returned, they received rock samples that allowed us to obtain data and it was the first time we could look for samples from another planetary body. This mission changed space exploration, it allowed us to have stations in Earth orbit, for example, Skylab 4 was an artificial space station that was launched in May 1973 by the United States, its parts came from the launcher Saturn V. This mission and many others proved that humans could perform many experiments and also proved that humans can live and work in space for long periods of time. This also led to the creation of the ISS, which took NASA approximately 10 years and 30 missions to assemble and succeed. The Soviet Union launched the first segment of the ISS on November 20, 1998, called the Zarya module, also known as the functional cargo block, which was financed by the United States. Later, the United States launched a shuttle on December 4 named Unity to begin assembling the ISS. this shuttle contains “50,000 mechanical elements, 216 pipes to transport fluids and gases and 121 internal and external electrical cables using six miles of wire”. After that, the first crew that was able to enter the interior of the ISS was launched on November 2, 2000, astronauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev and stayed for several months exactly 136 days. The Destiny module was added in 2001 and it is a research laboratory that is still used today as years pass, Europe and Japan have joined the ISS Columbus and Kibo. In 2013, the ISS Research Laboratory discovered that "proteins can be grown as crystals in space with almost perfect three-dimensional structures, useful for the development of new drugs", allowing them to use the different environments of the ISS. Keep in mind: This is just a sample.Now get a personalized article from our expert writers.Get a custom essayNASA's next creation is the Spirit and Opportunity, which are the Mars rovers that have were placed on Mars and collected data, from this data we discovered some interesting data. Spirit lasted 20 times longer than the original design, lasting 2,226 days.