In the Beginning

[Stephanie Wilson]

NASA's first administrator T. Keith Glennan shows then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, Chairman of the Senate's Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee, a sample of the aluminized Mylar film used to fabricate the 100-foot-diameter, automatically inflatable Echo I balloon. Project Echo was the U.S.'s first passive communications satellite that was launched on Aug. 12, 1960. NASA, or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, began operations nearly two year earlier on Oct. 1, 1958. Image Credit: NASA

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