Fifty years. Depending on your views that could be a lifetime, or merely a fraction of it. For NASA, it’s just the beginning. Today they proudly celebrate the anniversary of their operations, which began in 1958. What started as an attempt to keep ahead of the Soviet Union in terms of technology and science has become an organization dedicated to “exploring the universe and searching for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers.”

When it began NASA was essentially four laboratories and 80 employees, formerly of the research agency NACA (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics). The earliest programs involved research into human spaceflight, spurred onward by the Space Race between the United States and the USSR.

The next decade would be fueled by the challenge for both countries. After the success with Sputnik, Russia quickly pulled ahead of the game by becoming the first country to hit the moon with a man-made object, the first to orbit the moon and photograph its far side, both events occurring in 1959. By 1963 they had sent both a man (Yuri Gagarin in 1961) and a woman (Valentina Tereshkova) into space. They were the first to have a cosmonaut leave an orbiting spacecraft with Alexei Leonov in 1965. The next year they landed a probe on the moon which transmitted data back to Earth, and by 1971 they were the first to place a manned space station into orbit.

NASA, while knowing that accomplishing these same tasks would be a step in the right direction, were determined to get ahead of Russia, and so their ultimate goal was to put a man on the moon before the Soviet Union. Starting with the Mercury Seven, NASA focused on getting man in orbit and within ten years worked up to their dreams.

On 4:18pm, EDT of July 20, 1969 those famous first words were spoken from the surface of the moon- “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” Within seven hours Neil Armstrong made his fateful stride across the lunar surface, becoming not only the first American, but the first human on the moon.

The American space program has done very well for itself in the past fifty years, though it’s not without it’s setbacks. Of the 121 shuttle missions there have been two failures. The Challenger and Columbia disasters, which claimed the lives of 14 astronauts, have caused delays as well as prompted national concern over the dangers of space travel. Of course, since the 1950s, NASA has expanded it’s dreams beyond just getting man into space. The journeys of Pioneers 10 and 11 marked the beginning of extra-solar exploration, and to this day we continue to receive information from both Voyagers that were launched in the 1970s.

The future goals of NASA include plans for a permanent moon base, which they hope to begin construction by 2020 with plans for completion within four years. Should the project be successful it will be a fully functioning base that allows for crew rotations similar to the International Space Station. NASA administrator Michael D Griffin also hopes that an American will be on Mars by 2037, proving that even though the Space Race has long since ended, America still continues running.