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National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). US government agency responsible for space programs. Its birth is marked on July 29, 1958, when the Eisenhower government approved the National Aeronautics and Space Act, although its implementation did not take place until a few months later, on October 1. of that same year with four laboratories and about 8,000 employees. This US space program agency was created to replace the NACA entity (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) that since 1946 had been carrying out experiments with rocket planes, such as the supersonic Bell X-1. The experimental rocket aircraft programs initiated by NACA were extended to NASA in support of human spaceflight. Although throughout its history, NASA has carried out many space flight programs, both unmanned and manned.

During the Cold War, NASA's entire operation was marked by tough competition between the United States and the USSR, which became known as “the space race.” In fact, the birth of NASA was a product of Soviet advances in space: in 1957 the Russians launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, something that the Americans interpreted as a threat that they needed to counter. Throughout its history, NASA has developed such outstanding programs as Mercury, Gemini, Apollo 1 and Apollo 11, which managed to reach the Moon in 1969. The Mercury program began in 1958 with the aim of discovering if human beings could survive in outer space. On May 5, 1961, Alan B. Shephard became the first American astronaut when he piloted the Freedom 7 spacecraft on a 15-minute suborbital flight. On February 20, 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, during a 5-hour flight with the Friendship 7 spacecraft, which circled the Earth three times. This program was followed by the successful Apollo, which achieved important milestones in space flight. At the moment it is the only one that has sent manned missions beyond low Earth orbit and that a person has landed on another celestial body. Following disputes over the hegemony of the conquest of Space, in 1972, US President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin agreed on a joint manned mission to Space and declared their intention that all future international manned aircraft would have the capability to attach to each other.

Among other important missions starting in 2010, NASA began decommissioning the shuttles to complete construction of the International Space Station (ISS).