NASA opened its doors as a civilian space agency, created by Congress in response to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik less than a year earlier. Built from the bones of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the new agency inherited 8,000 employees and a mandate to win a space race that had barely begun.
The Sputnik launch in October 1957 had triggered genuine panic in Washington—not because the satellite did anything dangerous (it just beeped), but because it proved the Soviets could put something into orbit, and by extension could theoretically deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere on Earth. President Eisenhower, usually a picture of calm, pushed legislation through Congress in under a year.
NASA's first headquarters was modest: a few rented rooms in Washington D.C., a small staff mostly transferred from NACA's aeronautics labs, and no rockets of its own yet capable of reaching orbit reliably. T. Keith Glennan, a college president with no rocket experience, became its first administrator.
Within eleven years, the agency built from that unglamorous start would land men on the Moon. Few government startups in history have moved from bureaucratic paperwork to walking on another world so quickly.
Key people: T. Keith Glennan, Dwight D. Eisenhower