Wikipedia:VideoWiki/NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research.

History
President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958.

Directives of NASA
Some of the major NASA directives were to land people on the Moon, build the space shuttle, and build a large space station.

Apollo 11 Mission
The US public's perception of the Soviet lead in the space race (by putting the first man into space) motivated President John F. Kennedy to ask the Congress on May 25, 1961, to commit the federal government to a program to land a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s, which effectively launched the Apollo program.

NASA's Apollo 11 Mission successfully landed the first human being on moon. Neil Armstrong became the first person to stand on the Moon.

Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle became the major focus of NASA in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Space Shuttle Columbia was the first space-rated orbiter in NASA's Space Shuttle fleet, launching on April 12, 1981.

The Shuttle fleet lost two orbiters and 14 astronauts in two disasters: Challenger in 1986, and Columbia in 2003.

NASA's Space Shuttle program had 135 missions when the program ended with the successful landing of the Space Shuttle Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center on July 21, 2011. The program spanned 30 years with over 300 astronauts sent into space.

International Space Station
The International Space Station (ISS) combines NASA's Space Station Freedom project with the Soviet/Russian Mir-2 station, the European Columbus station, and the Japanese Kibō laboratory module.

The ISS has been continuously occupied for the past 17 years and 362 days, having exceeded the previous record held by Mir; and has been visited by astronauts and cosmonauts from 15 different nations. The station can be seen from the Earth with the naked eye and, as of 2018, is the largest artificial satellite in Earth orbit with a mass and volume greater than that of any previous space station. The ISS program is expected to continue until at least 2020, and may be extended beyond 2028.

Unmanned Mission
More than 1,000 unmanned missions have been designed to explore the Earth and the solar system.Besides exploration, communication satellites have also been launched by NASA.

Current Activities
NASA's ongoing investigations includes in-depth survey of Mars by Mars Rover and InSight.

Mars 2020 is a Mars rover mission by NASA's Mars Exploration Program with a planned launch in July 2020.

InSight is a robotic lander designed to study the interior of the planet Mars. The mission launched on 5 May 2018.

Other active spacecraft missions are Juno for Jupiter, New Horizons for Jupiter, Pluto, and beyond, and Dawn for the asteroid belt.