National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics

  • NASA

    NACA Test Pilot Poses with Plane

    In this 1957 photo, George Cooper, a test pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA, stands next to a North American F-100, a supersonic fighter tested by the NACA. Cooper served as a pilot in World War II before being hired at the NACA’s Ames Aeronautical Laboratory in 1945. Between 1945 and his retirement in 1973, Cooper tested over 135…

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  • NASA

    110 Years Ago: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Founded 

    On March 3, 1915, the United States Congress created the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Although the NACA’s founding took place just over 11 years after the Wright Brothers’ first powered flightfirst powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Congress took the action in response to America lagging behind other world powers’ advances in aviation and aeronautics. From its modest beginnings…

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  • NASA

    NASA Marks 110 Years Since Founding of Predecessor Organization

    To celebrate the 110th anniversary of the organization that ultimately became NASA, the agency released a new collection of videos to highlight the history of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and the ways it transformed flight over four decades. Not long after the beginning of World War I, the United States Congress, concerned that America was lagging behind other…

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  • NASA

    NASA Remembers Long-Time Civil Servant John Boyd

    John Boyd, known to many as Jack and whose career spanned more than seven decades in a multitude of roles across NASA as well as its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), died Feb. 20. He was 99. Born in 1925, and raised in Danville, Virginia, he was a long-time resident of Saratoga, California. Boyd is being remembered…

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  • NASA

    Glenn Hangar Has Long Been the Face of the Center

    The Flight Research Building, or hangar, at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland has not only housed the center’s aircraft and Flight Operations team for decades, but has also served as a visual representation of the center for the public. NASA has taken advantage of the hangar’s size and shape — along with its location near the center’s main entrance,…

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  • NASA

    65 Years Ago: NASA Begins Operations

    On Oct. 1, 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) officially began operations. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act the previous July, creating NASA to lead America’s civilian space program in response to Soviet advances in space exploration. T. Keith Glennan and Hugh L. Dryden were sworn in as NASA’s first administrator and deputy administrator, respectively.…

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