July 29: NASA

NASA Day Celebrates the anniversary of the birth of NASA in 1958, 60 years ago. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1 of the same year. NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It's vision is "To reach for new heights and reveal the unknown so that what we do and learn will benefit all humankind."

1. NASA Headquarters is at Two Independence Square in Washington DC. NASA is an independent agency that is not a part of any executive department but reports directly to the President.
2. NASA has 2 satellites chasing each other around the Earth. Their purpose is to track the distance between themselves to measure gravitational anomalies. They are nicknamed Tom and Jerry.
3. NASA has an Office of Planetary Protection in case we ever find life on other planets. It also has its own special agents who are armed, have arrest authority and can execute search warrants.
4. The projects NASA is currently working on include getting humans near or on the surface of Mars by the early 2030s. In preparation for this, a team of NASA scientists have been living and working in a dome on the side of a Hawaiian volcano for a year to simulate what it would be like to live in a base on Mars. They only go outside in spacesuits. Since getting to Mars, or any other planet for that matter, would involve spending weeks in a confined space with limited opportunity for movement, NASA is looking into what effect that is going to have on the human body – so they will pay people about $9,000 per month to lay in bed, doing absolutely nothing for up to 70 days. NASA is also working on a Star Trek style warp drive that would get people to Alpha Centurai in a couple of weeks.
5. Some of the NASA staff responsible for getting humans into space have remained virtually unknown until 2017 when a film, Hidden Figures, was made about them. While part of the reason was that they were working on classified stuff, rather like the ladies at Bletchley Park, another reason was that Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson were black women who started working at NASA in 1943. The fact that women of any race were employed was because a lot of the men were either away fighting in the Second World War or working on war related projects. They were known as computers because their job was to compute – do calculations. African American men didn't start working at NASA until 1951.
6. The Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida is, by volume - 3.7 million cubic meters (130 million ft3) - the fifth largest building in the world. The only buildings which are bigger are other assembly sites such as those for Boeing and Airbus. This building is so big it has its own weather system. The humidity of the climate in Florida causes clouds to form inside the building, which isn't great if you are building spacecraft and precision is vital. NASA have solved the problem by installing a huge air conditioning system weighing 10,000 tons. Another problem they are constantly dealing with in Florida is the alligators which are always getting through the fences and into the buildings.
7. There have been a few lawsuits thrown at NASA. When the space station Skylab fell to Earth in 1979, it landed in Esperance, Western Australia. The Shire of Esperance fined NASA $400 for littering. The fine was unpaid for 30 years until a radio host raised the money and paid it on NASA's behalf. On another occasion, three men from Yemen sued them for trespassing on Mars, claiming they'd inherited the planet from their ancestors 3,000 years ago.
8. Another strange job opportunity at NASA is currently occupied by a man called George Aldrich: that of “nasalnaut.” His job, basically, is to sniff everything before it can be sent into space. The reason behind this odd seeming task? Well, if you end up with something smelly in your house or your car there's an easy way to get rid of the pong – open a window. You can't do that in space, so it's necessary to make sure nothing on the space craft smells offensive.
9. NASA has its own Radio station. Third Rock Radio is broadcast from the International Space Station and includes not only informative broadcasts about space discovery but it also plays Music – new rock music. (https://www.nasa.gov/feature/third-rock-radio). You can also get NASA to text you whenever the ISS is passing over your location. https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/signup.cfm
10. Some information about the Moon landings to finish. There is a conspiracy theory that states NASA never sent men to the moon at all and it was all filmed in a Hollywood studio, but, in 1969, while NASA had the technology to get men to the moon it didn't have the technology to fake it. NASA admitted in 2006 that they no longer had the original recording of the First moon landing – they'd erased the tape and re-used it. The Apollo astronauts were embarking on such dangerous missions that it was impossible to insure them. So, before departure, they would sign their autographs, on the assumption that if there was a fatal accident, their autographs would become so valuable it would raise as much as an insurance claim.

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