Since its establishment in 1958, NASA  has been responsible for the majority of the space exploration missions conducted by the USA.

Among the most notable of NASA’s achievements was the Apollo programme. The Apollo 11 mission resulted in the USA winning the space race against Russia by being the first federal programme to put astronauts on the moon.

No other mission of NASA’s  has caught the public imagination like the first moonwalk, up until now.

It’s Recent Discoveries

Curiosity and New Horizons have become household names today thanks to NASA’s extraordinary discoveries, which have generated a renewed interest in space and the universe beyond us.

NASA’s rover to Mars, Curiosity, successfully landed on Mars in 2012, and nearly 1000 people gathered in New York’s Time Square to watch the live broadcast of the landing.

The rover’s mission was to find evidence of life on Mars, past or present. Since then, NASA has been in the news regularly, especially with the 2014 discovery that Mars once had conditions that could have supported life.

Earlier this year, the New Horizons mission to Pluto completed a flyby of the dwarf planet, giving the world its first clear image of the planet since its discovery in 1930.

In the same month, it announced the discovery of a planet that was understood to be Earth 2.0- a close approximation of our planet and its sun. This, of course, opened up the discussion around extraterrestrial life and space exploration once again.

On 25th September 2015, NASA announced a major discovery but refused to divulge any further details till a week later, when they announced the discovery of flowing water on Mars by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

In October, NASA was involved in the promotion of the film ‘The Martian’ as a way of publicising its future Mars programmes, including the ones scheduled for 2030 that aim to land astronauts on the planet’s surface.

Simultaneously, it released more pictures from the New Horizons’ flyby, which revealed that Pluto had blue skies, similar to that of Earth.

On November 2nd, NASA declared that it would announce key scientific findings from the MAVEN spacecraft, which is currently examining the atmosphere of Mars. This turned out to be the identification of what had caused the stripping away of the planet’s atmosphere- solar winds. This was what caused Mars to change from a planet that was hospitable to life to the cold, dry one it is today.

Today’s news in Hindi at DainikBhasker covers NASA’s latest discoveries in greater detail.

These are all important discoveries and are crucial to further understand the universe. Nevertheless, NASA has definitely been leveraging these findings, sometimes blatantly, like its promotion of the movie.

Funding Troubles

So why would the American agency responsible for the country’s civilian space programme need to stay visible?

The answer is quite simple - funding.

Federal expenditure on space programmes declined steadily after the Apollo missions, to less than 0.6% of the budget. The recent successes of the NASA missions have reignited the debate on planetary exploration funding. In fact, two weeks after the successful New Horizons flyby, the House Science Committee hearing made NASA’s funding the central topic of discussion.

Small wonder then, that NASA is doling out its successes in fits and starts to prolong its presence in the news. Leveraging its discoveries allows the agency to stay current, and stands as proof of its importance and relevance in the world today. This way it can direct public opinion towards a more favourable budget, which will allow the agency to design more long-term programmes for space exploration.