The U.S. Congress passed legislation establishing the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),
a civilian agency responsible for coordinating America’s
activities in space, on July 29, 1958. NASA has since
sponsored space expeditions, both human and mechanical,
that have yielded vital information about the solar system
and universe. It has also launched numerous earth-orbiting
satellites that have been instrumental in everything from
weather forecasting to navigation to global communications.

NASA was created in response to the Soviet Union’s October
4, 1957 launch of its first satellite, Sputnik I.