9781422270011

Chapter 1

WHAT DO SPACE SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS DO? A BRIEF HISTORY OF SPACE EXPLORATION

On July 29, 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The agency opened for business on October 1, 1958. In the ensuing decades, NASA’s scientists, engineers, technicians, astronauts, and other professionals worked together to achieve some of the greatest feats of science and exploration that have ever been accomplished by humans. In the 1960s alone, these included: • May 1961: The first American space flight involving a human being (astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr.) • July 1962: The launch of Telstar l, the first privately built communications satellite, which transmitted the first telephone and television signals via satellite • July 1969: The first astronauts—Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin—landed on and explored the moon.

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