Founded in 1958, NASA replaced the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) - which had existed since 1915. The agency was organized around the civilian aspects of advanced space and aeronautics technology - while United States Defense Department agencies continued with the development plans of ballistic missiles and other crewed and uncrewed defense-related spaceflight programs.
NASA would organize the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo human spaceflight programs, leading to the first crewed landing on Luna (Apollo 11) in 1969. Other flagship programs included the Space Shuttle and SLS (as part of the Artemis ecosystem). The agency was also responsible for operating a number of significant pure-science uncrewed exploration missions, including Mariner, Voyager, Viking, Galileo, Cassini, Magellan, Messenger, and New Horizons.
While the agency continues to operate its uncrewed deep space missions itself, as well as maintain an operational presence on the international space station, it has begun to start using a new services model, procuring launch and taxi services to Low Earth Orbit (and now Luna, with some aspects of the Artemis program) to the commercial providers emerging as an entirely new industry. This new industry has itself been heavily-nurtured by NASA itself, due the new contracting structures and program strategies it has moved to utilze over the last 25 year.
Due to disagreement between governments, NASA is not able to collaborate with CNSA due to constraints in United States law. While the United States has a long history of collaborating with Roscosmos after the fall of the Soviet Union (often as a way to keep the Russian space industry engaged on civilian activities). The relationship has been strained over the last several years - especially after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation; at this time the relationship is now focused only on keeping the International Space Station operating effectively until end-of-life.
