Happy Birthday NASA

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." Galileo Galilei

On July 29, 1958 President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act which created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Public Law 85-568

72 Stat. 426 (Jul. 29, 1958)

An Act

To provide for research into problems of flight within and outside the earth's atmosphere, and for other purposes.

Sec. 102. (a) The Congress hereby declares it that it is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of mankind.

As an elementary school aged child during the formulative years of NASA's existence I recall the excitment of the Apollo program, and the first lunar landing by Apollo 11. In my teen aged years the continued exploration through SkyLab, the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Space Shuttle program kept me interested in man's ascent into space and the prospect of lunar colonies and missions to Mars. While we are not living on the moon or Mars yet their is still hope in man's continued exploration of space and his reach for the stars.