NASA traces its roots to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Despite Dayton, Ohio, being the birthplace of aviation, by 1914 the United States recognized that it was far behind Europe in aviation capability. Determined to regain American leadership in aviation, the US Congress created the Aviation Section of the US Army Signal Corps in 1914 and established NACA in 1915 to foster aeronautical research and development. Over the next forty years, NACA would conduct aeronautical research in support of the US Air Force, US Army, US Navy, and the civil aviation sector. After the end of World War II, NACA became interested in the possibilities of guided missiles and supersonic aircraft, developing and testing the Bell X-1 in a joint program with the US Air Force. NACA’s interest in space grew out of its rocketry program at the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division.[4]

Launch of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency’s Explorer 1, America’s first satellite
The Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik 1 ushered in the Space Age and kicked off the Space Race. Despite NACA’s early rocketry program, the responsibility for launching the first American satellite fell to the Naval Research Laboratory’s Project Vanguard, whose operational issues ensured the Army Ballistic Missile Agency would launch Explorer 1, America’s first satellite, on February 1, 1958.

The Eisenhower Administration decided to split the US’s military and civil spaceflight programs, which were organized together under the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency. NASA was established on July 29, 1958, with the signing of the National Aeronautics and Space Act and it began operations on October 1, 1958.[4]

As the American’s premier aeronautics agency, NACA formed the core of NASA’s new structure by reassigning 8,000 employees and three major research laboratories. NASA also proceeded to absorb the Naval Research Laboratory’s Project Vanguard, the Army’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency under Wernher von Braun. This left NASA firmly as the US’s civil space lead and the Air Force as the military space lead.[4]