government organization

NASA

The agency that put twelve people on the Moon and keeps rewriting what we know about the universe.

Founded in 1958, NASA is the United States’ civil space agency — behind Apollo, the Space Shuttle, the great observatories, and the robotic probes still exploring the solar system.

Lunar ExplorationDeep SpacePlanetary ScienceSpace TelescopesHuman Spaceflight
Overview

NASA in brief

NASA was created in 1958, and within eleven years it had landed people on the Moon. Apollo is still the high-water mark of human exploration, but NASA’s reach goes far wider: the Space Shuttle built the International Space Station, Hubble and James Webb reshaped astronomy, and probes like Voyager have left the solar system entirely. Today the Artemis program is working to put astronauts back on the lunar surface. These pages follow a few of those threads — the rockets, the missions, and the ideas behind them.

Headquarters: Washington, D.C., United States

Track record
  • Landed twelve astronauts on the Moon between 1969 and 1972.
  • Flew the Space Shuttle 135 times and used it to build the ISS.
  • Operates Hubble and James Webb, the most productive telescopes ever built.
  • Sent Voyager 1 and 2 past the planets and on into interstellar space.
Focus areas

What they work on.

The main areas of work — each one ties into the vehicles, missions, and technology below.

01 Human exploration
02 Space science
03 Telescopes and observation
04 Planetary missions
05 Deep-space probes
06 Lunar return
Vehicles / Systems

The rockets and spacecraft.

The hardware itself — what each one does, what it flies, and why it earned its place.

Super heavy-lift launch vehicle Retired

Saturn V

Apollo lunar missions.

The rocket that sent Apollo to the Moon: 111 meters tall, five F-1 engines on the first stage, and still the most powerful launch vehicle ever flown to completion.

Significance

Saturn V never lost a crew. It carried every Apollo mission out of Earth orbit, including Apollo 11 in July 1969.

Missions

Apollo

Technology

Crewed exploration architecture, Heavy-lift architecture

Reusable orbital spacecraft system Retired

Space Shuttle

Crew, cargo, satellite servicing, and station assembly.

A winged orbiter that launched like a rocket and landed like a glider, paired with a giant external tank and two solid rocket boosters.

Significance

Across 135 flights from 1981 to 2011 it deployed Hubble, repaired satellites in orbit, and assembled most of the International Space Station.

Missions

Hubble Space Telescope, International Space Station

Technology

Space telescopes, Crewed exploration architecture

Super heavy-lift launch vehicle Operational program

SLS

Artemis lunar missions.

NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, built partly from Shuttle-derived engines and boosters, designed to send the Orion capsule toward the Moon.

Significance

Its first flight, Artemis I in November 2022, sent an uncrewed Orion on a loop around the Moon and back.

Missions

Artemis

Technology

Lunar exploration systems, Heavy-lift architecture

Crew spacecraft Operational program

Orion

Crew transport beyond low Earth orbit.

A crew capsule built for deep space, with its own life support, navigation, and a heat shield rated for the higher speeds of a return from the Moon.

Significance

Orion is how Artemis astronauts will reach lunar orbit — the first crewed spacecraft designed to leave Earth orbit since Apollo.

Missions

Artemis

Technology

Lunar exploration systems, Crewed exploration architecture

Missions / Programs

Where they go.

What the vehicles are actually for — launching satellites, flying crews, landing on the Moon, and reaching deep space.

Lunar exploration Historic program

Apollo

Moon

Eleven crewed missions that developed and proved lunar flight, ending with six landings on the surface of the Moon.

Significance

On 20 July 1969, Apollo 11 set the first humans on another world. Twelve astronauts walked on the Moon before the program ended.

Vehicle context

Saturn V

Lunar return Active program

Artemis

Moon

NASA’s program to put astronauts back on the Moon — this time near the south pole — using SLS, Orion, and a lunar lander.

Significance

Artemis aims to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon and to build toward a presence that lasts longer than a single visit.

Vehicle context

SLS, Orion

Deep-space probe Historic and extended science mission

Voyager

Outer solar system and interstellar space

Two probes launched in 1977 that flew past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune on a rare alignment of the outer planets.

Significance

Voyager 1 is now the most distant human-made object, still sending faint signals from interstellar space more than 24 billion kilometers away.

Orbital observatory Operational observatory

Hubble Space Telescope

Low Earth orbit

A school-bus-sized optical telescope in low Earth orbit, launched in 1990 and serviced five times by Space Shuttle crews.

Significance

After astronauts corrected its flawed mirror in 1993, Hubble produced the Deep Field images — long stares at apparently empty sky that turned out to be full of galaxies billions of years old.

Vehicle context

Space Shuttle

Space telescope Operational observatory

James Webb Space Telescope

Sun-Earth L2 region

An infrared observatory with a 6.5-meter gold-coated, segmented mirror, parked about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth at the L2 point.

Significance

Launched in December 2021, Webb sees the faint, stretched light of the earliest galaxies and reads the atmospheres of planets around other stars.

Planetary science Long-running program area

Mars exploration

Mars

A decades-long run of orbiters, landers, and rovers — from Viking and Pathfinder to Curiosity and Perseverance — studying the planet’s geology and climate.

Significance

These robots showed that Mars once had liquid water, and Perseverance is now collecting and caching samples for a future mission to bring back to Earth.

Human spaceflight and research International orbital research

International Space Station

Low Earth orbit

NASA’s role in the orbiting laboratory it leads with international partners: crew rotations, daily research, and keeping the station running.

Significance

The ISS has been continuously crewed since 2000 — more than two decades of unbroken human presence in orbit, used for research that needs weightlessness or the long haul.

Vehicle context

Space Shuttle

Technologies

The engineering behind it.

The core technical ideas that tie the vehicles and missions together.

Technology 05 links

Lunar exploration systems

Everything a Moon mission needs beyond the rocket: landers, spacesuits, navigation, communications, and the plan for working on the surface.

Significance

Apollo proved it could be done in the 1960s. Artemis is rebuilding the whole stack for longer stays and a return that lasts.

Technology 03 links

Deep-space probes

Robotic spacecraft that carry instruments, their own power, and big antennas far from Earth — often running for decades on their own.

Significance

Probes reach places people can’t yet go. Voyager, Cassini, and New Horizons sent back our first close looks at the outer planets and beyond.

Technology 03 links

Space telescopes

Observatories placed above the atmosphere, where there is no weather, no city glow, and no blurring air to fight.

Significance

From orbit, Hubble and Webb capture detail and faint light that no ground telescope can match, across visible and infrared wavelengths.

Technology 07 links

Crewed exploration architecture

The layered systems that keep astronauts alive: launch escape, life support, navigation, communication, and a survivable reentry.

Significance

Every crewed mission is a chain of backups behind a single goal — bring the people home.

Technology 02 links

Planetary science instrumentation

Cameras, spectrometers, drills, and weather sensors tuned to read the rock, chemistry, and climate of another world.

Significance

Instruments turn a flyby into evidence — measuring what a planet is actually made of, not just photographing it.

Technology 04 links

Heavy-lift architecture

The biggest rockets, sized to lift heavy crewed spacecraft and large probes onto high-energy paths out of Earth orbit.

Significance

How far a mission can travel is decided on the launch pad. Saturn V and SLS exist because reaching the Moon takes that much raw energy.

Explore in AELVOX Lab

Labs in progress.

These NASA labs are still to come. For now they mark where Saturn V, SLS, Apollo, and the probes will connect.

Coming Soon Saturn V

Saturn V Launch Architecture Lab

A planned lab on staging, the burn that sends a crew toward the Moon, and the command and lunar modules that made Apollo work.

Planned Lab
Coming Soon SLS

SLS and Orion Mission Lab

A planned lab on the Artemis launch, Orion’s flight to lunar orbit, and the trajectory that gets it there.

Planned Lab
Coming Soon

Apollo Lunar Systems Lab

A planned lab on lunar-orbit rendezvous, the lander’s descent to the surface, and the climb back to the command module.

Planned Lab
Coming Soon

Deep Space Probe Visualization Lab

A planned lab on gravity-assist flybys, the instruments a probe carries, and how it phones home across billions of kilometers.

Planned Lab
Relationship Map

Artemis: returning to the Moon

From the program goal to the rocket, the crew capsule, the systems a landing needs, and the labs still to come.

Organization NASA
Program Artemis

Return humans to lunar exploration

Systems SLS + Orion

Launch energy and crew transport

Technology Lunar exploration systems

Architecture beyond one vehicle

Lab Future lunar systems lab

Coming soon

Relationship Map

Voyager: leaving the solar system

How a 1977 probe became humanity’s most distant explorer — the mission, the technology that keeps it alive, and the science it still returns.

Organization NASA
Mission Voyager

Outer planet and deep-space science

Technology Deep-space probes

Autonomous scientific spacecraft

Science Planetary exploration

Flybys become measurements

Lab Future probe visualization

Coming soon

Continue

Keep exploring NASA.

NASA is the wide-angle view — the Moon, the great telescopes, the probes, and the planetary science still unfolding.

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