Langley in The Space Age

Langley Space Task Group conceived and managed Project Mercury, the nation's first human-in-space program. The Mercury 7 astronauts trained at Langley until 1963, when they and the Space Task Group moved to Houston, Texas, and formed the core of what would become the Johnson Space Center.

Langley made major contributions to the Gemini, Apollo and Skylab missions.
 

Its realistic rendezvous and docking simulators helped astronauts perfect maneuvers critical to the success of the Gemini and Apollo projects.
 

A team of Langley engineers vigorously championed the lunar orbit rendezvous mission mode that many experts say made meeting President Kennedy's goal of landing humans on the moon by the end of the 1960s possible.
 

Images collected by Langley-designed Lunar Orbiter missions were a key to the successful Apollo lunar landings.
 

Langley's Lunar Landing Research Facility trained Neil Armstrong and others to land on the moon.
 

Viking

In many ways Viking matched — and in some ways even surpassed — the challenges and adventure of Apollo. Langley managed Viking from 1968 until 1978, nearly two years after the landings, when the program was turned over to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
 

Langley's Viking legacy can be seen even today in our work on entry, descent and landing technologies in recent Mars missions such as Mars Pathfinder, the Mars Exploration Rovers and Mars Science Laboratory.

Understanding Earth's Climate

In response to a growing concern for protection of our environment, Langley researchers began to develop ways to measure the atmosphere over Earth's oceans and continents, and to detect the presence of dangerous pollutants. Scientists continue to carefully monitor Earth’s energy balance to answer ongoing questions about climate change, and will do so even more rigorously on upcoming missions.
 

Living & Working in Space

Langley researchers pioneered the concept of the boost glider and led development of the X-15, America's first hypersonic transatmospheric vehicle.
 

Langley was deeply involved in the development and testing of NASA's Space Shuttle. Even before it could be flown, the Shuttle had to be put through thousands of hours of wind tunnel testing and other rigorous experiments. Much of this was done at Langley. And when it came time for NASA to return to flight after the Challenger and Columbia accidents Langley engineers once again answered the call to help solve what went wrong.
 

Long before plans for today's International Space Station got under way, Langley scientists and engineers realized the advantages of a laboratory in space for scientific experiments, communications, astronomical observation, manufacturing, and as a relay base for lunar and planetary missions. They began to explore the problems of designing and operating such a facility in the 1960s. This early brainstorming and testing provided a solid basis for NASA's development of the space station. Today Langley employees continue to investigate the technologies for large space structures.

Continuing Langley's Aeronautics Roots

Langley Research Center never forgot that the first "A" in NASA stood for "aeronautics." Langley engineers and scientists have led the way in supersonics research with programs in the 1960s and 1990s to develop a national supersonic transport. That work is now part of efforts to design a low boom flight demonstrator that could allow jets to fly at supersonic speeds over land.
 

Langley also kept the dream of hypersonic flight — more than five times the speed of sound — alive. This research, which linked back to studies made at Langley as early as the 1950s, found application in the Langley-led National Aero-Space Plane (NASP) program, which was to create the technology base for an entirely new family of aerospace vehicles capable of flying at high Mach numbers to the edges of the atmosphere and beyond. The NASP program was discontinued in the early 1990s, but Langley continued hypersonic research in the 2000s with the X-43A, which achieved nearly 7,000 miles an hour, setting an official world speed record for a jet-powered aircraft.
 

Langley research has led not only to faster planes, but also safer ones. Engineers have focused on improving all types of aircraft – from small planes to rotorcraft to transport airplanes. Langley flight tests to improve lightning protection and wind shear detection have enhanced airliners. Langley crash tests of aircraft and development of aviation safety technologies have contributed to making flying the safest mode of transportation.