Learn about the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from the early days of the Mercury launches, to landing humankind on the Moon, through the Space Shuttle era and on to a cooperation with various commercial launch and payload companies.
“NASA TV airs a variety of regularly scheduled, pre-recorded educational and public relations programming 24 hours a day on its various channels. Programs include “NASA Gallery”, which features photographs and video from NASA’s history; “Video File”, which broadcasts b-roll footage for news and media outlets; “Education File”, which provides special programming for schools; “NASA Edge” and “NASA 360”, hosted programs that focus on different aspects of NASA; and “This Week @ NASA”, which shows news from NASA centers around the country.
Live ISS coverage and related commentary is aired daily at 11 a.m. EST and repeats throughout the day.
The network also provides an array of live programming, such as 24-hour coverage of Space Shuttle missions, ISS events (spacewalks, media interviews, educational broadcasts), press conferences and rocket launches. These often include running commentary by members of the NASA Public Affairs Office who serve as the “voice of Mission Control,” including Rob Navias, Josh Byerly, Nicole Cloutier and Brandi Dean.“
When the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, was founded on July 29, 1958, it was tasked with conducting all of the U.S.’s non-military space activity. At that time, no one (except perhaps a few science fiction writers) dreamed that we would have spacecraft travel past the heliopause and on into the Kuiper Belt. No one dreamed that we would land men on the Moon, or that the science behind a Chinese fireworks would evolve into something as large as the Saturn V rocket.
NASA brought all of those things from the realm of fantasy to the realm of reality, the realm of achievement. While there were setbacks, usually small, occasionally disastrous, the agency forged ahead, one step at time, to achieve its goals. The successes of the Mercury program led to the successes of the Gemini program, and then to the Apollo program, and the fulfillment of President John F. Kennedy’s pledge to land men on the Moon, and bring them safely back home.
NASA saw the need for a reusable spacecraft, a Space Shuttle. That program sent 306 men and 49 women, from a total of 16 countries, into Space. Over a thousand experiments were performed to see how natural processes, specialized materials, plants, and even humans would fare in the microgravity environment of low Earth orbit.
NASA also had another side; the robotic or unmanned missions. Explorer, Pioneer, Echo, Ranger, Mariner, Surveyor, Helios, Viking, and Voyager are just some of the many important programs operated by NASA.
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