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. The agency opened
for business on Oct. 1, 1958.

President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics
and Space Act of 1958 into law on July 29, creating
NASA.

At 12:51 EDT on July 24, 1969, Apollo 11, the U.S. spacecraft that
had taken the first astronauts to the surface of the moon, safely
returned to Earth.

The American effort to send astronauts to the moon had its origins
in a famous appeal President John F. Kennedy made to a special
joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961.
        
        

The Apollo 11 astronauts are, from left, Neil Armstrong,
Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin. They were quarantined
after splashdown to ensure they did not bring back any contamination from the moon. (Image credit: NASA)

On July 21, 2011, NASA’s space shuttle program completed
its final, and 135th, mission, when the shuttle Atlantis landed
at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

TIM MAGUIRE

Carlos Humberto Santana Barragán is 78 years old today.

In 2023, Rolling Stone named him the 11th greatest guitarist
of all time. He has won 10 Grammy Awards and three Latin
Grammy Awards, and was inducted along with his namesake
band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.     

After more than a decade in space, Pioneer 10, the world’s
first outer-planetary probe, left the outer limits of the known
solar system by crossing the orbit of Neptune, the system’s
then farthest planet.

The following day, it radioed back its first scientific data on
interstellar space.