• NASA was founded in 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
  • NASA’s first successful human spaceflight was the Freedom 7 mission, which was piloted by astronaut Alan Shepard on May 5, 1961.
  • NASA’s Apollo program, which ran from 1961 to 1975, successfully landed 12 astronauts on the Moon.
  • NASA’s Space Shuttle program, which ran from 1981 to 2011, saw 135 successful missions.
  • NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has been in orbit since 1990 and has captured some of the most iconic and scientifically valuable images of our universe.
  • NASA’s Kepler mission, launched in 2009, discovered the first Earth-sized exoplanet Kepler-186f in 2014.
  • NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, which launched in 2011, successfully landed the car-sized rover named Curiosity on Mars in 2012.
  • NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018, is the first spacecraft to fly into the Sun’s atmosphere, or corona.
  • NASA has been collaborating with private companies, such as SpaceX and Boeing, to develop new spacecraft and technologies to help make space travel more affordable and sustainable.
  • NASA is planning to return to the Moon by 2024 with the Artemis program and establish a sustainable human presence on the lunar surface.
  • NASA’s Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft, launched in 1977, are still operational and have become the first human-made objects to leave our solar system and enter interstellar space.
  • NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, set to launch in 2021, is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and is considered the most complex and powerful space telescope ever built.
  • NASA’s Cassini–Huygens spacecraft, a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, discovered geysers on Saturn’s moon Enceladus and lakes of liquid methane on its largest moon, Titan.
  • NASA’s Kepler has discovered more than 4,000 exoplanets and continues to search for potentially habitable worlds.
  • NASA’s Kepler also discovered that most stars in the Milky Way galaxy have Earth-sized exoplanets.
  • NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, landed on Mars in 2004 and operated for years beyond their original mission, providing valuable data and discoveries about the planet’s geology and potential for past water.
  • NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered that exoplanets are common in the galaxy, with estimates suggesting that nearly every star in the sky has at least one planet orbiting it.
  • NASA has a long-term goal of sending humans to Mars in the 2030s.
  • NASA also plays a major role in studying and understanding Earth’s climate and weather, through missions such as the Aqua, Terra and Suomi NPP satellites.
  • NASA’s Apollo 11 mission in 1969 was the first time humans set foot on the Moon. Neil Armstrong famously declared “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” as he stepped onto the lunar surface.
  • NASA’s Apollo 13 mission in 1970 was a dramatic and successful emergency return of the crew after an oxygen tank explosion. The phrase “Houston, we’ve had a problem” became famous from this event.
  • NASA’s Skylab program, which ran from 1973-1974, was the first United States space station and provided valuable information on the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body.
  • NASA’s Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft were the first spacecraft to fly by Jupiter and Saturn, respectively, and provided the first close-up images of those planets and their moons.
  • NASA’s Mariner 9 spacecraft became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet (Mars) in 1971-1972.
  • NASA’s Viking 1 and Viking 2 spacecraft, which landed on Mars in 1976, were the first successful landers on the red planet and conducted experiments to search for evidence of life.
  • NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which orbited Jupiter from 1995-2003, provided important information about the planet and its moons, including the discovery of a subsurface ocean on Europa.
  • NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which flew by Pluto in 2015, provided the first close-up images of the dwarf planet and its moons, and revealed it to be a complex and geologically active world.
  • NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, launched in 2009, has discovered thousands of exoplanets and is helping scientists study the universe’s most distant objects.
  • NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018, is on a mission to study the Sun’s outer atmosphere and has set multiple records for closest approach to the Sun.