At NASA 1958-1964Sputnik
Sputniks’ late 1957 launch and orbits upended NACA. A year later, in NACA’s place, the country created the civilian National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA. Most aeronautics programs initially continued to operate as they had before the change to NASA, but these were now a minor portion of a much larger and qualitatively different enterprise.
The Space Task Group was created in 1958 to manage America’s human spaceflight program. Throughout 1959 and 1960, Mercury was the only approved manned space flight program. The Mercury capsule was essentially experimental: an attempt to master all problems, including how spacecraft should return to Earth. The easy choice was to rely on the best-known technique: a ballistic reentry capsule recovered by parachute after it returned to the atmosphere, with a landing on water. Still, under the fear generated by Sputnik, NASA was taking a broader view of what it should research.