NASA

NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is the independent agency of the United States federal government responsible for the nation's civil space program and for research in aeronautics and space. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it operates ten field centers across the country. It was established on July 29, 1958, by the National Aeronautics and Space Act, amid the Space Race, and began operations on October 1, 1958, succeeding the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which dated from 1915. It has led most American spaceflight programs, among them Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the Apollo program, Skylab, the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, and it leads the Artemis program. It appears in this atlas because it is the principal employer of engineers such as Maxime Faget, who designed the Mercury spacecraft.