NASA was founded on July 29, 1958 under the Eisenhower administration. Its purpose was to conduct research into flying within and outside the earth's atmosphere, but it was also established to consolidate the different US missile and space programs being done by different branches of the military. Over its 65-year history, NASA has made great strides toward learning about space, the different celestial bodies within our galaxy, and other technological advancements that further our efforts toward interplanetary exploration.
There have been many breakthrough moments in NASA's history, the most famous being the first landing of humans on the moon. But apart from that, NASA also took the first image of a black hole, took a photo that gave us definitive proof that the Earth is spherical, showed us what the Earth looked like viewed from the moon, and captured a photo of the Earth from roughly 3.2 billion miles from the Sun, just beyond the orbit of Neptune. These 16 iconic photos from NASA have been a testament of how far space exploration has come, and how much farther we have yet to go.
(Image credit: NASA)