July 29th is NASA's birthday. In October of 1957, the Soviet Union greatly injured the pride of the United States by launching their first satellite, Sputnik into orbit. The United States had not given much priority to launching rockets into space. Much of their rocketry research was done by the military to develop ballistic missiles. Sputnik changed all that. Public opinion believed the Soviet Union was already technologically ahead of the U.S. and "something" had to be done. The "something" started when President Eisenhower signed an act to create the National Aeronautics and Space Agency. NASA would start operations on October 1, 1958 with 8,000 employees and an annual budget of $100 million. The Space Race was on.
NASA launched their first satellite in January 1958. In the next twenty years, they put men in space, landed men on the Moon, sent robotic probes to other planets and out of our solar system, created networks of satellites, built the Skylab space station and created a fleet of reusable Space Shuttles.
Find out what else occurred on this day in science history.
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