NASA

Abstract

NASA began full operation on October 1, 1958, after the National Advisor Committee on Aeronautics was abolished. Getting a little head start, NASA inherited the committee's facilities, laboratories, and personnel and immediately set to work planning its future. According to a Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Album of NASA, the first flight of administration used a chimpanzee to test the effects of space on living mammals, but the flight only lasted sixteen and a half minutes and landed over 120 miles from its target. Though this was a slight setback for the United States, it did not stop President John F. Kennedy from proposing a plan to go to the moon. The bill called for a government agency where everything, whether it was a success or failure, was to be kept in open view of the public, and the goal of the administration was simply, "To explore the phenomenon of the atmosphere and space for peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind".