History: NASA Archive Photography

On February 1st, 2010, the American Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program was initiated with the purpose of creating commercially operated spacecraft capable of delivering crew to the ISS. These spacecraft are expected to become operational in the mid 2010s.
• Unmanned missions (1958–)
More than 1,000 unmanned missions have been designed to explore the earth and parts of the solar system. Apart from exploration also communication satellites have been launched by NASA. The missions have been launched directly from earth or by space shuttle, which again could launch the satellite itself or a vehicle containing the satellite.
The first mission was Explorer 1, which started as an ABMA/JPL project during the early space race. It was launched in January 1958, two month after Sputnik. At the creation of NASA it was transferred to this agency and still continues to this day (2011). Its missions have been focusing on the Earth and the Sun measuring among others magnetic fields and solar wind. A more recent Earth mission, not related to the Explorer program, was the Hubble telescope, was brought into orbit in 1990.