October 1

NASA Opens for Business

1958 — The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Begins Operations

Time not applicable

On October 1, 1958, a new agency of the United States government officially began operations. Its name was the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—NASA. The agency had been created only two months earlier, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act into law on July 29. But October 1 was the day NASA actually opened for business. Its creation had been accelerated by events unfolding high above Earth. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite. A month later came Sputnik 2, carrying the dog Laika. The United States was suddenly confronted with unmistakable evidence that the Soviet Union possessed powerful rocket technology and had taken the lead in the emerging exploration of space. The American response was not simply to build another rocket. The United States needed an organization capable of coordinating a long-term civilian program of aeronautical and space research. There was already an institution from which to build one. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA, had been established in 1915. For more than four decades, its engineers and scientists had conducted research that profoundly influenced aircraft design, aerodynamics, propulsion, and high-speed flight. NASA did not replace that expertise so much as inherit and expand it. On September 30, thousands of people left work as NACA employees. On October 1, they returned as NASA employees. Approximately 8,000 NACA personnel formed the core of the new agency. NASA initially inherited three major NACA laboratories—Langley in Virginia, Ames in California, and Lewis in Ohio—along with smaller facilities at Wallops Island, Virginia, and the high-speed flight station at Edwards Air Force Base in California. NASA's first administrator was T. Keith Glennan, formerly president of the Case Institute of Technology. NACA director Hugh L. Dryden, one of America's most respected aeronautical scientists, became NASA's first deputy administrator. The agency's initial headquarters occupied temporary quarters in the Dolley Madison House on Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. There, on October 1, Glennan addressed a headquarters staff of approximately 170 people. The organization was small compared with the NASA that would emerge during the following decade. But it did not remain small for long. NASA soon absorbed or acquired responsibility for programs and organizations already engaged in space-related work. These included space-science activities associated with the Naval Research Laboratory, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, and eventually the Army rocket-development organization in Huntsville led by Wernher von Braun. Almost immediately, the new agency confronted the question of human spaceflight. On NASA's first day of operation, Robert Gilruth briefed Glennan about plans for sending a person into space. NASA's historical account records that within two hours of hearing the presentation, Glennan told Gilruth to proceed. The effort soon developed into the Space Task Group and Project Mercury. Only ten days after NASA began operations, Pioneer 1 became the first spacecraft launched under the new agency's auspices. Although a launch-vehicle malfunction prevented it from reaching its intended lunar orbit, Pioneer 1 traveled approximately 70,000 miles from Earth and returned useful scientific measurements. The pace accelerated rapidly. Within less than three years, Alan Shepard became the first American in space. In 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth. Gemini followed, developing rendezvous, docking, spacewalking, and long-duration flight techniques. Then came Apollo. On July 20, 1969—less than eleven years after NASA opened its doors—Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon. NASA's work would eventually extend much farther: robotic spacecraft to every planet of the solar system, astronomical observatories above Earth's atmosphere, reusable Space Shuttles, Mars rovers, international space stations, planetary-defense experiments, and telescopes capable of examining galaxies whose light began its journey billions of years ago. Yet NASA's mandate was never limited to space. The word Aeronautics came first in its name for a reason. The agency continued the NACA tradition of research into aircraft, propulsion, aerodynamics, materials, flight safety, and eventually supersonic, hypersonic, electric, and increasingly efficient aviation. The organization that opened its doors on October 1, 1958, therefore joined two frontiers: flight within Earth's atmosphere and flight beyond it.

Why It Matters: NASA's opening created a permanent civilian institution for American aeronautical research and space exploration. Built upon more than four decades of NACA expertise, the agency became one of the principal organizations through which humanity explored the Moon, planets, Sun, Earth, and universe. October 1 marks not the passage of the law that created NASA, but the day the agency itself began its work.

 

Also on This Day

1990 — The First Hubble Science Paper Is Submitted

Time not applicable

On October 1, 1990, astronomer Tod Lauer of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory submitted the first scientific paper based upon observations made by the newly launched Hubble Space Telescope. The paper concerned the core of the galaxy NGC 7457 and observations made with Hubble's Planetary Camera. The milestone came during a difficult period for Hubble. The telescope had been launched aboard Space Shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990, amid enormous expectations. An observatory above Earth's atmosphere could avoid the blurring effects produced as starlight passed through turbulent air. Astronomers anticipated exceptionally sharp images and observations at wavelengths difficult or impossible to study from the ground. Then scientists discovered that Hubble's 2.4-meter primary mirror had been manufactured to the wrong shape. The error was extraordinarily small in ordinary terms—roughly one-fiftieth the thickness of a human hair at the mirror's edge—but enormous for a precision astronomical instrument. Hubble suffered from spherical aberration. Its images were not as sharp as intended. The problem became one of NASA's most publicized technical embarrassments. But Hubble was not useless. Astronomers learned how to characterize the optical error, and several instruments could still perform valuable observations. Image-processing techniques also recovered substantial scientific information. The October 1 paper demonstrated an important point: the flawed telescope could still do science. The paper examined the central region of NGC 7457, a lenticular galaxy tens of millions of light-years away, as astronomers investigated the structure of its nucleus and the possibility of a massive compact object there. Hubble's story would change dramatically three years later. In December 1993, astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour conducted the first Hubble servicing mission. They installed corrective optics and a new camera designed to compensate for the primary mirror's error. The results were spectacular. Hubble became one of the most scientifically productive astronomical instruments ever constructed. But its scientific career had already begun before the repair. Why It Matters: Submission of Hubble's first scientific paper showed that even the telescope's serious optical flaw could not prevent useful astronomy. The milestone also began a scientific literature that would eventually encompass discoveries involving planets, stars, galaxies, black holes, the expansion of the universe, and some of the most distant objects ever observed.

2005 — Soyuz TMA-7 Launches Expedition 12 and Gregory Olsen

03:54:53 UTC

On October 1, 2005, a Soyuz-FG rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying Soyuz TMA-7 toward the International Space Station. Aboard were Russian cosmonaut Valery Tokarev, NASA astronaut William McArthur, and American scientist and entrepreneur Gregory Olsen. Tokarev and McArthur were beginning a long-duration stay as the principal crew of Expedition 12. Olsen was making a very different kind of journey. He became the third privately funded spaceflight participant to travel to the International Space Station, following Dennis Tito in 2001 and Mark Shuttleworth in 2002. NASA's history identifies Olsen as the third such participant. Olsen was not simply a wealthy passenger with an interest in space. He held advanced scientific degrees and had founded companies specializing in infrared and optical technologies. During his time aboard the station, he conducted experiments for the European Space Agency, participated in educational communications with students, and photographed Earth. Soyuz TMA-7 docked with the International Space Station on October 3. McArthur and Tokarev remained in orbit for approximately six months. Olsen stayed aboard the station for about eight days before returning to Earth with the departing Expedition 11 crew aboard Soyuz TMA-6. His flight belonged to a small but historically significant development. For most of the Space Age, people traveled into orbit almost exclusively as representatives of governments. Privately funded participants suggested that another category was possible. The numbers remained tiny, the costs enormous, and access extremely limited. But the idea that a private citizen could purchase transportation to orbit foreshadowed a much larger commercial human-spaceflight industry that would begin developing during the following decades.

Why It Matters: Soyuz TMA-7 continued the permanent international occupation of the ISS while Gregory Olsen's flight represented the gradual emergence of privately funded human spaceflight. The mission illustrates how an orbital station built by governments also became an early destination for people traveling under commercial arrangements.

 

The Bigger Picture

October begins with an institution. That may seem less dramatic than a rocket launch, planetary discovery, or Moon landing. Yet institutions are part of how exploration becomes possible. NASA did not invent American aeronautics on October 1, 1958. It inherited decades of expertise from NACA. It did not invent rocketry. It did not create astronomy. And it did not begin the Space Age—the Soviet Union had done that with Sputnik almost exactly one year earlier. What NASA provided was a durable organizational framework within which thousands of scientists, engineers, technicians, astronauts, mathematicians, physicians, administrators, universities, contractors, and international partners could pursue increasingly ambitious goals. The other events of October 1 illustrate how that framework evolved. In 1990, the newly launched Hubble Space Telescope was already beginning to produce scientific research despite a serious flaw. Hubble would eventually demonstrate another important characteristic of large scientific institutions: the ability to recognize a mistake, devise a solution, and recover. And Soyuz TMA-7 shows a world that had changed enormously since 1958. An American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut launched together toward an international laboratory permanently occupied by people from nations that had once competed bitterly for dominance in space. Beside them sat a privately funded participant. The progression is striking: create a national civilian space agency → build observatories beyond the atmosphere → construct an international laboratory in orbit → begin opening that environment to people traveling through commercial arrangements.

There is another reason October 1 deserves special attention. NASA was created in the geopolitical pressure of the Cold War, but the National Aeronautics and Space Act gave the new agency a broader purpose. It called for the expansion of human knowledge, preservation of the United States' role in aeronautical and space science and technology, cooperation with other nations, and the peaceful application of space activities. The history that followed did not always unfold neatly according to those aspirations. But on October 1, 1958, something enduring began. A few thousand people arrived at work under a new name. Within eleven years, members of their organization would help place human footprints on the Moon.

At a Glance

1958 — Time not applicable — NASA officially begins operations, absorbing the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics as the core of the new American civilian space agency.

1990 — Time not applicable — Tod Lauer submits the first scientific paper based on Hubble Space Telescope observations, examining the nucleus of galaxy NGC 7457.

2005 — 03:54:53 UTC — Soyuz TMA-7 launches Valery Tokarev, William McArthur, and Gregory Olsen toward the International Space Station; Olsen becomes the third privately funded spaceflight participant to visit the station.