The Transition to NASA

In the wake of the launch of Sputnik I in October 1957, the National Air and Space Act of 1958 combined the NACAs research facilities at Langley, Ames, Lewis, Wallops Island, and Edwards with the Army and Navy rocket programs and the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to form NASA. Suddenly, the NACAs scope of American civilian research in aeronautics expanded to include the chal­lenges of space flight driven by the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union and the unprecedented growth of American commercial aviation on the world stage.

NASA inherited an impressive inventory of facilities from the NACA. The wind tunnels at Langley, Ames, and Lewis were the start of the art and reflected the rich four-decade legacy of the NACA and the ever – evolving need for specialized tunnels. Over the next five decades of NASA history, the work of the wind tunnels reflected equally in the first "A” and the "S” in the administration’s acronym.