Atmosphere: A Love Story

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a US federal government agency established in 1958, combining four previously separate programs: the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the Naval Research Laboratory’s Project Vanguard, the Army’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. NASA was established in direct response to Sputnik 1, the first satellite, which the Soviet Union launched into orbit in 1957, beginning the era known as the Space Race.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, NASA jobs were primarily held by white men with military flight backgrounds. This included the men of the Mercury program (which launched the first American men into suborbital spaceflight), and the Apollo program, which landed the first men on the moon via Apollo 11 in 1969. However, the shuttle emergency in the late 1970s spurred major changes in spaceflight, including crucial technological advancements in the design of the shuttle to allow it to land like a plane, enabling reuse and safer spaceflight.

The other major change came when NASA officially opened astronaut candidate applications to women. Women had been part of the space program since the beginning, primarily in the areas of mathematics, computation, and engineering, as detailed in the nonfiction books