History: NASA Archive Photography

NASA missions
The most important part of NASA's activities are its missions; they can be divided into manned and unmanned. The latter can be either independent, carrying scientific equipment, or supportive, testing equipment for manned flights. In the beginning, NASA’s missions focused on the spacerace with the Soviet Union, which won the first round, but later USA took the initiative and won the final race to the Moon. The unmanned missions have until now explored most of the solar system. They have also brought telescopes for deep space exploration into orbit around the Earth together with satellites for studying Earth itself.