National Aeronautics and Space Administration
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the principal civilian space agency in the United States, and the leading space science agency in the world. Its scientific and technological activities pose a variety of ethical issues, from setting program priorities to environmental impacts and risk–safety tradeoffs. NASA decisions, however, rarely turn on explicitly ethical considerations (see, for example CAIB 2003, PCSSCA 1986). Common influences on NASA decisions include interest-group lobbying, Congressional politics, and intra-agency competition for resources.
Nasa's Mission and Other Space Activities
Legislation created NASA in 1958, building on existing civilian aviation research activities of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The core of NASA's mission is space exploration, divisible into human exploration and space science. Human exploration includes, for example, the space shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS) in Earth orbit and the Apollo missions to the Moon. Space science includes astronomy and robotic planetary exploration missions; the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is the most visible example of the former, while the Mars rover missions of 2004 exemplify the latter. Exploration and science overlap: Astronauts installed instruments on the Moon, and scientific experiments are conducted on the ISS and shuttle.
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