NASA celebrated its 58th Birthday

Photo Credit: NASA - NASA Original Logo from 1958

 On July 29th, 2016 NASA or the NASA celebrated its 58th Birthday. On this day in 1958 then President Dwight D Eisenhower signed into existence the National Aeronautics and Space Administration close the door of it predecessor the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. 

 Since 1958 NASA has lead the globe in Space research and Low Earth Orbit and Deep Space science missions, including Project Mercury (Merc), Project Gemini (PG) America's first 2 man Spacecraft missions, the Apollo Moon Landing Missions as well as the follow up Skylab space station missions using remaining Apollo hardware for LEO as the Last official Apollo Mission the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). The revered Space Shuttle (STS) took the reigns. At this time NASA is supporting the International Space Station (ISS) and is overseeing the development of the Orion (MPCV) Multi purpose crew vehicle, the Space Launch System (SLS) and Commercial Crew vehicles like the SpaceX Dragon 2 and the Boeing CST 100 Starliner. 

 The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program (LSP) that provides protocols of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. As well as the Ground Service Development Operations (GSDO) who are currently refurbishing the Vehicle Assembly Building and the Mobile Launch Tower, and the newly refurbished Crawler Transporter 2. They will carry our first SLS Rocket to LC-39B that will travel to the Moon unmanned in Fall of 2018.

Photo Credit: NASA - NASA Worm Logo 

NASA is continually doing science and research experiment's in Low Earth Orbit or LEO to better understand our own planet as well as learning the secrets of the Solar System and the Universe and even further. Diligently toiling while we sleep to make our own planet a better place. The their Science Mission Directorate. Like the upcoming Osris - Rex mission which will travel to Bennu a near Earth asteroid and retrieve a sample and return it to earth for analysis. The Dawn spacecraft which went out to the dwarf planet Ceres as well as giant proto-planet Vesta. The Mars Curiosity Rover which was the first mission a rover the size of a family Sedan was landed successfully on the red planet. Curiosity is still making giant discoveries like water in the surface soil and much more about Mars geological past. New Horizons was the first satellite to take detailed photographs and scientific spectrographic imaging of our most known distant neighbor. 

Two upcoming Mars missions will help further our understanding of the Red Planet. 

Insight in May of 2018 which will drill below the surface to see what Mars's crust is composed of, and the Mars 2020 Rover will launch in you guessed it 2020. 

 And in 2018 the Hubble Space Telescope with get a successor by the name of the James Webb Space Telescope which will lift off on an ESA Ariane V rocket, initially slated for lift-off aboard an SLS Heavy variant. but due to budget problems the Ariane V has be selected as the launch vehicle. here is to another 58 years of Space Exploration and Earth understanding!!!!!

Phot Credit: NASA - Current NASA Logo