Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the Apollo program, Skylab, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station (ISS), and the ongoing multi-national Artemis The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the United States' civil space program, as well as research in aeronautics and space. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., NASA operates ten field centers across the US and is organized into three mission directorates: Human Spaceflight, Research and Technology, and Scien NASA… The Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik 1 ushered in the Space Age and kicked off the Space Race. Despite NACA's early rocketry program, the responsibility for launching the first American satellite initially fell to the Naval Research Laboratory's Project Vanguard. Vanguard's operational issues led the Army Ballistic Missile Agency to successfully launch Explorer 1, America's first satellite, on February 1, 1958. The Eisenhower Administration decided to separate the nation's military and civil spaceflight programs, which had been previously organized together under the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency. NASA's first dedicated Earth observation satellite, Landsat, launched in 1972. This long-standing focus ultimately led to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration jointly developing the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite network and contributing to the global discovery of ozone depletion. === Space Shuttle === NASA had pursued spaceplane development since the 1960s, seeking to blend its dual aeronautics and spaceflight mandates. NASA viewed a spaceplane as part of a broader architectural program designed to provide routine and economical logistical support to a future space station in Earth orbit, which would, in turn, serve as a hub for lunar and Mars missions. An operational, reusable launch vehicle was expected to end reliance on expensive, expendable boosters like the Saturn V. In 1969, NASA designated the Johnson Space Center as the lead facility for the design, development, and manufacturing of the Space Shuttle orbiter, while the Marshall Space Flight Center led the development of the launch system. While nearly all early astronauts were military test pilots, the Shuttle's diverse operational needs led NASA to recruit civilian scientific and technical experts. Notably, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space aboard STS-7. The revised astronaut selection framework also allowed NASA to include exchange astronauts from US allies and international partners for the first time. The first orbital Space Shuttle flight occurred in 1981 when Columbia launched on the STS-1 mission, serving as a critical flight test for the new system. NASA initially intended for the Space Shuttle to fully replace expendable launch vehicles such as the Air Force's Atlas, Delta, and Titan, as well as the European Space Agency's Ariane rockets. The Shuttle's Spacelab payload module, developed by the ESA, drastically increased NASA's on-orbit scientific capabilities compared to prior eras. NASA successfully launched commercial satellites on STS-5, and in 1984, the STS-41-C mission conducted the world's first on-orbit satellite servicing operation when Challenger captured and repaired the malfunctioning Solar Maximum Mission satellite. The Space Shuttle could also retrieve malfunctioning satellites—like Palapa B2 and Westar 6—and return them to Earth, where they were repaired and eventually relaunched. Despite ushering in an era where NASA could frequently contract launch services for commercial companies, the Space Shuttle drew significant criticism for failing to be as cost-effective or rapidly reusable as initially advertised. In 1986, the Challenger disaster during the STS-51L mission resulted in the tragic loss of the orbiter and all seven astronauts, grounding the entire fleet for 36 months. This forced the 44 commercial companies that had contracted with NASA to revert to using expendable launch vehicles. Recognizing that the Space Shuttle could not fulfill all of its economic and rapid-turnaround promises, NASA intended the X-30 to operate as a true single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane with both civil and military utility. With the end of the Cold War reducing defense spending, the X-30 was canceled in 1992 before achieving flight status. === Unleashing commercial space and returning to the Moon === In the aftermath of the 2003 Columbia disaster, President Bush introduced the Constellation program, designed to serve as a successor to the Space Shuttle and extend human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit. The first of them, the Hubble Space Telescope, was delivered to orbit in 1990 and continues to function, in part due to prior servicing missions performed by the Space Shuttle. The other remaining active great observatories include the Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO), launched by STS-93 in July 1999 and is now in a 64-hour elliptical orbit studying X-ray sources that are not readily viewable from terrestrial observatories. The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) is a space observatory designed to improve the understanding of X-ray production in objects such as neutron stars and pulsar wind nebulae, as well as stellar and supermassive black holes. As of October 2022, nine satellites have been built with eight of them successfully operating in orbit. === European Space Agency (ESA) === NASA collaborates with the European Space Agency on a wide range of scientific and exploration requirements. From participation with the Space Shuttle (the Spacelab missions) to major roles on the Artemis program (the Orion Service Module), ESA and NASA have supported the science and exploration missions of each agency. There are NASA payloads on ESA spacecraft and ESA payloads on NASA spacecraft. The agencies have developed joint missions in areas including heliophysics (e.g.