50 Years of NASA

By Nancy Atkinson - August 01, 2008 01:03 PM UTC | Space Exploration

Fifty years ago this week NASA was born. On July 29, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the "National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958." NASA replaced NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, to meet the challenge of exploring beyond Earth, and in particular, to send a human into space. NASA has accomplished a lot during the last 50 years, and now its time to celebrate. To commemorate the anniversary, NASA has developed an interactive multimedia website that provides a historic tour of its first five decades of exploration. It's a fun and interesting site that offers lots of history and a little look at the future, too. The site combines historic and current video with entertaining computer animation, and the virtual exhibit takes a World's Fair approach to NASA history, with pavilions that host each decade of NASA's achievements and challenges.

Begin your personal tour

here

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"We're very excited to have people come and take a look at NASA's history," said Brian Dunbar, NASA's Internet services manager at Headquarters in Washington. "We've been able to take a wide range of material and weave it into a virtual tour that allows people to explore at their own pace."

Here are a few things you can see in this virtual tour: • Interior 3D views of John Glenn's Friendship 7 Mercury spacecraft • The original April 1959 press conference introducing the Mercury astronauts • A tour of the International Space Station • Video presentations about NASA's aeronautics programs • An interview with former CBS news journalist Walter Cronkite • A presentation of the Voyager and Viking missions hosted by an avatar of the late Carl Sagan

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com