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On 29 July 1958 President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. The act established a broad charter for civilian aeronautical and space research with unique requirements for dissemination of information, absorbed the existing NACA into the new organization as its nucleus, and empowered broad transfers from other government programs. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration came into being on 1 October 1958. All this made for a very busy spring and summer for the people in the small NACA Headquarters in Washington. Once the general outlines of the new organization were clear, both a space program and a new organization had to be charted. The NACA's assistant director for aerodynamic research, headed a committee to plan the new organization.
Talks with the Advanced Research Projects Agency identified the military space programs that were space science-oriented and were obvious transfers to the new agency. Plans were formulated for building a new center for space science research, satellite development, flight operations, and tracking: The Goddard Space Flight Center was dedicated in March 1961. The 8000 people, three laboratories (now renamed research centers) and two stations, with a total facilities value of $300 million and an annual budget of $100 million were transferred intact to NASA. There followed an intense two-year period of organization, build up, fill in, planning, and general catch up. Only one week after NASA was formed, Congress gave the go ahead to Project Mercury, America\'s first manned spaceflight program. The Space Task Group was established at Langley to get the job done. The new programs brought into the organization were slowly integrated into the NACA nucleus. Many spaceminded specialists were drawn into NASA, attracted by the exciting new vistas. Long-range planning was accelerated. The first NASA 10-year plan was presented to Congress in February 1960. It called for an expanding program on a broad front: manned spaceflight (first orbital, then circumlunar), scientific satellites to measure radiation and other features of the near-space environment, lunar probes to measure the lunar space environment and to photograph the Moon, planetary probes to measure and to photograph Mars and Venus, weather satellites to improve our knowledge of Earth's broad weather patterns, continued aeronautical research, and development of larger launch vehicles for lifting heavier payloads. The cost of the program was expected to vary between $1 billion and $1.5 billion per year over the 10-year period.
High speed airplane research continued and led to the NASA's X-15, which attained a speed of Mach 6,7 which is 7,270 km/hr, the fastest speed ever reached by a jet. The X-15 contributed heavily to research in spaceflight as well as to high-speed aircraft research. Using the powerful X-15 engines, the first vertical takeoff and landing plane was developed.
A 4000-person Development Operations Division, headed by Wernher von Braun, was transferred from the Army to NASA along with the big Saturn booster project.
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