NACA closes its doors; NASA opens them the same morning

For four decades, NACA had done the research work behind American aviation, the agency whose wind tunnels shaped the P-51 Mustang and whose superchargers powered high-altitude bombers in World War Two. On October 1, 1958, that agency ceased to exist. The agency's 7,500 employees and $300 million in facilities, including its Langley and Ames laboratories, passed directly into a new civilian agency: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The letterhead changed that morning. The mission did too…