The program laid the foundation for NASA's current human spaceflight capability, and funded construction of its Johnson Space Center and Kennedy Space Center.

When Kennedy's newly appointed NASA Administrator James E. Webb requested a 30 percent budget increase for his agency, Kennedy supported an acceleration of NASA's large booster program but deferred a decision on the broader issue.

It became clear that managing the Apollo program would exceed the capabilities of Robert Gilruth's Space Task Group, which had been directing the nation's manned space program from NASA's Langley Research Center.

In July 2011, after returning the piece of debris at NASA's request, the sixteen-year-old Schanze was given an all-access tour of the Kennedy Space Center as well as VIP seating for the launch of STS-135, the final mission of the Space Shuttle program.

STS-51-F ( also known as Spacelab 2 ) was the nineteenth flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program, and the eighth flight of Space Shuttle Challenger.

* Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System, an on-going NASA meteorological experiment, part of NASA's Earth Observing System ( EOS ) program

For example, NASA's workhorse space shuttle used cryogenic hydrogen / oxygen propellant as its primary means of getting into orbit, and all of the rockets built for the Soviet space program by Sergei Korolev used liquid oxygen as their oxidiser.

Gemini 10 ( officially Gemini X ) was a 1966 manned spaceflight in NASA's Gemini program.

NASA's Apollo program, however, landed twelve people on the Moon and returned them to Earth.

* 2005 – Space Shuttle program: STS-114 Mission – Launch of Discovery, NASA's first scheduled flight mission after the Columbia Disaster in 2003.

* 2011 – NASA's Space Shuttle program ends with the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-135.

NASA's now retired Space Shuttle program used a large amount of 1970s-era technology.

* 1966 – Gemini 11, the penultimate mission of NASA's Gemini program, and the current human altitude record holder ( except for the Apollo lunar missions )

Following the conclusion of the ALT test flight program, on March 13, 1978, Enterprise was flown once again, but this time half way across the country to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center ( MSFC ) in Alabama for the Mated Vertical Ground Vibration Testing ( MGVT ).

** NASA's Explorer 1, the first American satellite and Explorer program spacecraft, reenters Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.

Huntsville is home to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and has strong community ties to the space program.

* " Colossus ", a computer program developed for NASA's Project Apollo

The United States tested twenty different sizes and designs during Project Rover and NASA's NERVA program from 1959 through 1972 at the Nevada Test Site, designated Kiwi, Phoebus, NRX / EST, NRX / XE, Pewee, Pewee 2 and the Nuclear Furnace, with progressively higher power densities culminating in the Pewee ( 1970 ) and Pewee 2.

The Viking program grew from NASA's earlier, and more ambitious, Voyager Mars program, which was not related to the successful Voyager deep space probes of the late 1970s.

NASA's Space Shuttle program, officially called Space Transportation System ( STS ), was the United States government's manned launch vehicle program from 1981 to 2011.

The program formally commenced in 1972, although the concept had been explored since the late 1960s, and was the sole focus of NASA's manned operations after the final Apollo and Skylab flights in the mid-1970s.

NASA's transition plan has the program operating through 2010 with a transition and retirement phase lasting through 2015.

In 1961, Pearlington was one of six communities in Hancock County, Mississippi acquired either wholly ( Gainesville, Logtown, Napoleon, Santa Rosa, and Westonia ) or in part ( a section of northern Pearlington ), along with a combined population of 700 families who were completely relocated to provide a acoustical buffer zone for what was envisioned to be NASA's main rocket testing facility, the John C. Stennis Space Center ( SSC ).

NASA's planned Space Interferometry Mission ( SIM PlanetQuest ) ( now cancelled ) was to utilize astrometric techniques to detect terrestrial planets orbiting 200 or so of the nearest solar-type stars, and the European Space Agency's GAIA ( due to launch in 2012 ), which will be applying astrometric techniques in its stellar census.

* 2002 – NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.

Odyssey aided NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which reached Mars in March 2006, by monitoring atmospheric conditions during months when the newly arrived orbiter used aerobraking to alter its orbit into the desired shape.

* 1982 – NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center on its third mission, STS-3.

For example NASA's space shuttle fires its engines for around 8. 5 minutes, consuming 1, 000 tonnes of solid propellant ( containing 16 % aluminium ) and an additional 2, 000, 000 litres of liquid propellant ( 106, 261 kg of liquid hydrogen fuel ) to lift the 100, 000 kg vehicle ( including the 25, 000 kg payload ) to an altitude of 111 km and an orbital velocity of 30, 000 km / h.

After its first flight in April 1983, Challenger quickly became the workhorse of NASA's Space Shuttle fleet, flying far more missions per year than Columbia.

* 2004 – NASA's unmanned spacecraft Genesis crash-lands when its parachute fails to open.

* July 11 – NASA's first orbiting space station Skylab begins its return to Earth, after being in orbit for 6 years and 2 months.

* February 19 – NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.

NASA's Glenn Research Center has proposed a small aspect ratio spherical torus reactor for its " Discovery II " conceptual vehicle design.

On 8 November 1985, Stephen Edberg ( then serving as the Coordinator for Amateur Observations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory ) and Charles Morris were the first to observe Halley's comet with the naked eye in its 1986 apparition.

* NASA's Juno Jupiter exploration probe is scheduled to end its mission and be deorbited, after spending over a year in Jupiter orbit.

Deposits significant in location, if not in abundance, have been found in Gusev by NASA's Spirit rover, providing strong evidence for the presence of liquid water on the planet Mars in an earlier stage of its evolution.

From its initiation, MFSC has been NASA's lead center for the development of rocket propulsion systems and technologies.

The latter three are part of NASA's series of Great Observatories ; this series also includes the Spitzer Space Telescope, but this was not launched by a Space Shuttle and MSFC had no significant role in its development.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Society pushed its scientific and technologic agenda, which led to an increased interest in rover-based planetary exploration and NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto.

Inducted into the Space Foundation's Space Technology Hall of Fame for its cordless power tool achievements and contributions to NASA's Gemini and Apollo programs.

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit casts a shadow over the trench that the rover is examining with tools on its robotic arm.

Feynman continued to investigate the lack of communication between NASA's management and its engineers, and was struck by management's claim that the risk of catastrophic malfunction on the shuttle was 1 in 10 < sup > 5 </ sup >; i. e., 1 in 100, 000.

When describing these wildly differing estimates, Feynman briefly lapses from his damaging but dispassionate detailing of NASA's flaws to recognize the moral failing that resulted from a scientific failing: he was clearly upset that NASA presented its clearly fantastical figures as fact to convince a member of the public, schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, to join the crew.

Based on his experiences with NASA's management and engineers, Feynman concluded that the serious deficiencies in NASA management's scientific understanding, the lack of communication between the two camps, and the gross misrepresentation of the shuttle's dangers, required that NASA take a hiatus from shuttle launches until it could resolve its internal inconsistencies and present an honest picture of the shuttle's reliability.

NASA's contract with Morton Thiokol, the contractor responsible for the solid rocket boosters, included a clause stating that in the event of a failure leading to " loss of life or mission ," Thiokol would forfeit $ 10 million of its incentive fee and formally accept legal liability for the failure.