NASA's budget allocation 1962-1972, by category

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the US Government, founded in 1958, taking over from the dissolved National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It oversees the US space program, as well as research into aeronautics and aerospace, while the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) oversees military matters regarding space. NASA was founded at the beginning of what has become known as the 'space race,' a period of Cold War history where the Soviet Union and the US competed for dominance and superiority of space technology. In 1957 the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite (Sputnik) into the earth's orbit, marking the first significant development in the space race. In May 1961, President John F Kennedy claimed that the US would put man on the moon before the end of the decade, and this table shows the areas that NASA invested most heavily in, giving some insight into their areas of focus.

Investment grows

There is no budget breakdown for the preceding years, however the overall budgets were as follows: (in U.S dollars) 1959: 331 million, 1960: 524 million, 1961: 964 million. One of the most striking observations is how the overall budget grew in these first few years, rising from 0.3 billion U.S dollars in 1959 to 5.1 billion in 1964. In these formative years in NASA's history we can see that Human Spaceflight was, by far, the biggest area of investment during this time, taking up well over 50 percent of the budget in most years, and it was approximately two thirds of the budget in 1965.

The Eagle has Landed

On July 20, 1969, the US finally accomplished JFK's goal of landing man on the moon, almost six years after his assassination. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to stand on the moon, with the success of the Apollo 11 mission. NASA would send a further five manned missions to the lunar surface, culminating with Apollo 17 in 1972. There have been no human landings since this point, however the Trump Administration has pledged that American astronauts will make it to the moon's surface again by 2024.