ican people, proclaimed: ‘‘I believe this Nation 
should commit itself to achieving the goal, before 
this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon 
and returning him safely to Earth. No single space 
project in this period will be more impressive to 
mankind, or more important in the long-range explo-
ration of space; and none will be so difficult or ex-
pensive to accomplish.’’; 
(6) on September 19, 1961, the National Aero-
nautics and Space Administration announced that 
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration 
center dedicated to human space flight would be 
built in Houston, Texas; 
(7) on February 17, 1973, the Manned Space-
craft Center in Houston was renamed the Lyndon 
B. Johnson Space Center; 
(8) on December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 took off 
atop a Saturn V booster from the Kennedy Space 
Center for a historic mission to orbit the Moon; 
(9) as Apollo 8 traveled outward, the crew fo-
cused a portable television camera on Earth and for 
the first time humanity saw its home from afar, a 
tiny, lovely, and fragile ‘‘blue marble’’ hanging in 
the blackness of space; 
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(10) this transmission and viewing of Earth 
from a distance was an enormously significant ac-
complishment and united the Nation at a time when 
American society was in crisis over Vietnam, race re-
lations, urban problems, and a host of other difficul-
ties; 
(11) on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts 
Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin made the 
first lunar landing mission while Michael Collins or-
bited overhead in the Apollo command module; 
(12) Armstrong set foot on the surface of the 
Moon, telling the millions of listeners that it was 
‘‘one small step for a man, one giant leap for man-
kind’’, and Aldrin soon followed and planted an 
American flag, but omitted claiming the land for the 
United States, as had routinely been done during 
European exploration of the Americas; 
(13) the two Moon walkers left behind an 
American flag and a plaque bearing the inscription: 
‘‘Here Men From The Planet Earth First Set Foot 
Upon the Moon. Jul. 1969 A.D. We Came in Peace 
for All Mankind.’’; 
(14) on April 24, 1990, the Hubble Space Tele-
scope was launched into space aboard the STS–31 
mission of the Space Shuttle Discovery, and since 
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then, the Hubble has revolutionized astronomy, while 
expanding our knowledge of the universe and inspir-
ing millions of scientists, students, and members of 
the public with its unprecedented deep and clear im-
ages of space; 
(15) on July 4, 1997, the Mars Pathfinder 
landed on Mars and on January 29, 1998, an Inter-
national Space Station agreement among 15 coun-
tries met in Washington, DC, to sign agreements to 
establish the framework for cooperation among the 
partners on the design, development, operation, and 
utilization of the Space Station; 
(16) the National Aeronautics and Space Ad-
ministration’s stunning achievements over the last 
50 years have been won for all mankind at great 
cost and sacrifice; in the quest to explore the uni-
verse, many National Aeronautics and Space Admin-
istration employees have lost their lives, including 
the crews of Apollo 1, the Space Shuttle Challenger, 
and the Space Shuttle Columbia; 
(17) the success of the United States space ex-
ploration program in the 20th Century augurs well 
for its continued leadership in the 21st Century, 
such leadership being attributable to the remarkable 
and indispensable partnership between the National 
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Aeronautics and Space Administration and its 10 
space and research centers, including— 
(A) from small spacecraft to supercom-
puters, science missions and payloads to ther-
mal protection systems, information technology 
to aerospace, the Ames Research Center in 
California’s Silicon Valley, which provides prod-
ucts, technologies, and services that enable 
NASA missions and expand human knowledge; 
(B) the Dryden Flight Research Center, 
the leading center for innovative flight research; 
(C) the Glenn Research Center, which de-
velops power, propulsion, and communication 
technologies for space flight systems and aero-
nautics research; 
(D) the Goddard Space Flight Center, 
which specializes in research to expand knowl-
edge on the Earth and its environment, the 
solar system, and the universe through observa-
tions from space; 
(E) the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the 
leading center for robotic exploration of the 
solar system; 
(F) the Johnson Space Center, which man-
ages the development, testing, production, and 
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delivery of all United States human spacecraft 
and all human spacecraft-related functions; 
(G) the Kennedy Space Center, the gate-
way to the Universe and world leader in pre-
paring and launching missions around the 
Earth and beyond; 
(H) the Langley Research Center, which 
continues to forge new frontiers in aviation and 
space research for aerospace, atmospheric 
sciences, and technology commercialization to 
improve the way the world lives; 
(I) the Marshall Space Flight Center, a 
world leader in developing space transportation 
and propulsion systems that accelerate explo-
ration and scientific discovery, including the 
Michoud Assembly Facility, which has been a 
world-class facility since 1961 for fabrication of 
large space structures, including the Saturn V 
and the Space Shuttle External Tank, and 
which will have a critical role in the Constella-
tion program, including manufacturing major 
pieces of the Orion crew capsule, the Ares I 
upper stage, and the Ares V core stage; and 
(J) the Stennis Space Center, which is re-
sponsible for rocket propulsion testing and for 
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