2-860-830 - Heritage Space/Heritage Images

Final meeting of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, USA, August 21, 1958. Left to right: T. Keith Glennan, NASA Administrator; Mr. Preston R. Bassett, member of the NACA Committee on Aerodynamics; Mr. Charles J. McCarthy, Chairman of the Board, Chance Vought Aircraft, Inc. After the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellites in late 1957, the United States decided that it needed to re-organize civil space efforts. On July 29, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Public Law 85-568 and established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). T. Keith Glennan was sworn in as the first Administrator of NASA on August 19, 1958, and on October 1, the official effective date of the new agency, NACA was absorbed into NASA, along with several other government space research organizations.