Everything You Need to Know
NASA conducts its work in three seperate branches, called mission directorates:
NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) works to solve the challenges that still exist in our nation's air transportation system: air traffic congestion, safety and environmental impacts.
Solutions to these problems require innovative technical concepts, and dedicated research and development. NASA's ARMD pursues the development of new flight operation concepts, and new tools and technologies that can transition smoothly to industry to become products.
Through green aviation, NASA is helping create safer, greener and more effective travel for everyone. Our green aviation goals are to enable fuel-efficient flight planning, and reduce aircraft fuel consumption, emissions and noise.
NASA aeronautics' four research programs conduct fundamental, cutting-edge research into new aircraft technologies, as well as systems-level research into the integration of new operations concepts and technologies into the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). A fifth program manages a portfolio of wind tunnels and other testing facilities (icing, propulsion), flight research and support aircraft, and the evolution of test technologies at NASA centers around the country.
The Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate provides the Agency with leadership and management of NASA space operations related to human exploration in and beyond low Earth orbit. HEO also oversees low-level requirements development, policy, and programmatic oversight. The International Space Station, currently orbiting the Earth with a crew of six, represents the NASA exploration activities in low Earth orbit.
Exploration activities beyond low Earth orbit include the management of Commercial Space Transportation, Exploration Systems Development, Human Space Flight Capabilities, Advanced Exploration Systems, and Space Life Sciences Research and Applications.
The directorate is similarly responsible for Agency leadership and management of NASA space operations related to Launch Services, Space Transportation, and Space Communications in support of both human and robotic exploration programs.
NASA leads the nation on a great journey of discovery, seeking new knowledge and understanding of our planet Earth, our Sun and solar system, and the universe out to its farthest reaches and back to its earliest moments of existence. NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD) and the nation's science community use space observatories to conduct scientific studies of the Earth from space to visit and return samples from other bodies in the solar system, and to peer out into our Galaxy and beyond. NASA's science program seeks answers to profound questions that touch us all:
This is NASA's science vision: using the vantage point of space to achieve with the science community and our partners a deep scientific understanding of our planet, other planets and solar system bodies, the interplanetary environment, the Sun and its effects on the solar system, and the universe beyond. In so doing, we lay the intellectual foundation for the robotic and human expeditions of the future while meeting today's needs for scientific information to address national concerns, such as climate change and space weather. At every step we share the journey of scientific exploration with the public and partner with others to substantially improve science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education nationwide.
Sources: http://www.nasa.gov ¦ http://google.com/images
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