What Does NASA Specialize In?

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent government agency set up in the year 1958 for research and development of activities for space exploration. It was set up to counter the setting up of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in the year 19857. Ironically, Sputnik is now one of the partners of NASA in its ambitious $60 billion International Space Station, which houses astronauts.

NASA was instrumental in landing the first man on moon in 1969. It has also sent unmanned spaceships like Voyager, Viking and Mariner by a programme called "the space shuttle programme" for planetary and space exploration. Talks are on for launching a "building block" strategy that will replace the shuttle by the end of the decade and land men on moon and on Mars by 2020.