About our NASA news
Latest news on NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which created NASA from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and other federal agencies.
NASA has four main directorates: Aeronautics Research, which conducts research and development on aviation technologies and systems; Human Exploration and Operations, which oversees human spaceflight activities, such as the International Space Station (ISS), the Artemis program, and commercial crew and cargo programs; Science, which conducts scientific investigations of the Earth, the Sun, the solar system, and the universe; and Space Technology, which develops and demonstrates innovative technologies for future space missions.
NASA has launched hundreds of missions, both crewed and robotic, since its inception. Some of its most notable missions include: Apollo, which landed 12 humans on the Moon between 1969 and 1972; Skylab, which was the first U.S. space station in orbit from 1973 to 1979; Space Shuttle, which flew 135 missions from 1981 to 2011 and deployed many satellites, space probes, and space telescopes; Hubble Space Telescope, which has been observing the universe since 1990; Voyager, which explored the outer planets and are now in interstellar space; Mars Exploration Rovers, which have been exploring the surface of Mars since 2004; Curiosity, which is a car-sized rover that has been studying the geology and habitability of Mars since 2012; Juno, which is orbiting Jupiter and studying its structure and magnetosphere since 2016; Parker Solar Probe, which is flying close to the Sun and measuring its corona and solar wind since 2018; Perseverance, which is a rover that landed on Mars in 2021 to search for signs of ancient life and collect samples for future return to Earth; Ingenuity, which is a helicopter that flew on Mars in 2021 as a technology demonstration; James Webb Space Telescope, which is a successor to Hubble that will launch in 2021 to observe the infrared universe; and Artemis, which is a program that aims to land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon by 2024.