Venture Into Space Early Years Of Goddard Space Flight Center

Venture Into Space: Early Years of Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA Historical Data Book: NASA launch systems, space transportation, human spaceflight, and space science, 1979-1988

Venture Into Space

The Goddard Space Flight Center is a partnership of many people – scientists, engineers, project managers, and administrators – whose combined efforts are needed to carry on and bring to fruition scientific and technological expeditions into outer space. While the Goddard Space Center came into being with the establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, its antecedents extend much further. Indeed, the Center inherited much scientific and operational competence from groups and individuals who had already achieved professional distinction. Under the guidance of Dr. Harry J. Goett, the Center's first director, 1959-1965, a most competent team came into being. This team successfully developed and launched a wide variety of scientific spacecraft, sent into orbit this Nation's first weather and synchronous communications satellites, and provided the tracking links for America's first man-in-space missions. The purpose of this preliminary historical report is to describe the Center's historical origins and traditions, as well as the projects and activities which the men and women of Goddard were privileged to make their contribution to the U.S. space program. In doing so, they not only opened a new path of exploration but were carrying on a tradition of scientific and technical curiosity envisioned two generations earlier by a then unknown New England professor – Dr. Robert H. Goddard.