Read on to learn about some of the most incredible moments and missions in NASA history.

The forthcoming images depict some of NASA’s most profound achievements and capture these missions in a way that is at once visually profound and scientifically meaningful. They might be geniuses, but they’re also simply curious human beings. And as it turns out, the people doing all this incredible work are a little more down to Earth than the general public may believe. Since its creation, the agency has put people on the moon, created a new window into viewing the universe, and discovered extrasolar planets. Founded in 1958 and headquartered in Washington D.C., NASA quickly changed the course of both robotic and human spaceflight. In the modern world, NASA is at the forefront of space exploration, making knowledge of the great unknown even more possible.

In honor of National Space Day on May 6, Stacker curated a gallery of groundbreaking NASA missions. People at all points in history have had ideas about what lies beyond the sky and have wanted both to understand and see it for themselves. In 2015, new evidence emerged supporting the existence of water on Mars, and today, space tourism is a hot topic of conversation. Human existence makes up a tiny fraction of that time-if the history of Earth was 24 hours, humans came into the picture just before 11:59 p.m.-and yet we’ve spent much of that time fascinated with space.įor so long, we have posited theories and done our best to reach the most distant corners of the universe. Sixteenth-century Mesopotamians envisioned space as a cosmic ocean, while under the reign of the Roman Empire, Ptolemy theorized a geocentric universe. The universe is nearly 14 billion years old. However the ISS suffered long delays, design changes and cost overruns and forced the service life of the Space Shuttle to be extended several times until 2011 when it was finally retired.Sophia Crisafulli 32 groundbreaking NASA missions in photographs space station evolved into the International Space Station and was formally initiated in 1983 by U.S. It was planned to have it be replaced by a new vehicle by the early 1990s. The Shuttle was originally conceived of and presented to the public in 1972 as a “Space Truck” which would, among other things, be used to build a United States space station in low Earth orbit during the 1980s. The program formally commenced in 1972 and was the sole focus of NASA’s manned operations after the final Apollo and Skylab flights in the mid-1970s. Ultimately the design we all know was chosen, using a reusable winged orbiter, reusable solid rocket boosters, and an expendable external fuel tank for the orbiter’s main engines. The goal, as presented by NASA to Congress, was to provide a much less-expensive means of access to space that would be used by NASA, the Department of Defense, and other commercial and scientific users.ĭuring early shuttle development there was great debate about the optimal shuttle design that best balanced capability, development cost and operating cost. This group evaluated the shuttle studies up to that date, and recommended a national space strategy including building a space shuttle. NASA began exploring the concept of the space shuttle beginning in the late 1960s. In 1969 President Richard Nixon formed the Space Task Group, chaired by Vice President Spiro T.

Nasa space shuttle program cost