NASA was formed to be the focus of the nation's efforts in the space age. The act instituted a new federal agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which absorbed the pioneer National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics as well as space-allocated funds and several space projects from the Department of Defense. Nine months of debate over national purposes, capabilities, and shortcomings produced the National Aeronautics and Space Act, signed into law by President Dwight D. These achievements, followed by the explosion at launch of this country's Vanguard rocket, which was designed to orbit a tiny research satellite, shocked the American public. A month later, Sputnik II, weighing some 1,100 pounds and carrying a dog, went into orbit. orbited the first artificial earth satellite, Sputnik I.
In 2015 the center received approximately 25 percent of the total NASA budget and contributed nearly $3 billion to the Houston-area economy. From its inception through 2015, the center had received more than $150 billion in federal appropriations. Center customers include NASA, the Department of Defense, and commercial organizations. In 2015 it employed more than 11,000 workers, including approximately 80 astronauts and about 3,000 federal workers, involved in the design, development and testing of spacecraft for manned space flights the development and operation of permanently manned space stations the selection and training of astronauts and other specialists experimentation medical research and propulsion-systems testing at White Sands Test Facilities at Las Cruces, New Mexico. At its complex of more than 100 buildings on a 1,620-acre site twenty-five miles south of downtown Houston, the center houses its facilities for conducting space operations and applied research. The origins of the center are to be found in the national commitment to a broad program of space exploration, including manned space flight, which the United States made in response to the Soviet Union's successful space launches, begun in 1957. Johnson Space Center, originally known as the Manned Spacecraft Center, is one of ten National Aeronautics and Space Administration field centers and home base for the nation's astronauts.
0 kommentar(er)
