Key Documents Relating to NASA's Founding: this page includes documents from Monograph No. 10, NASA's Origins and the Dawn of the Space Age.

Key Documents Relating to Sputnik, Vanguard, Explorer, and the International Geophysical Year: This site includes both U.S. and Soviet documents from the mid to late 1950s, setting the historical context for NASA's founding.

Key Space Policy Documents including the unamended and amended versions of the Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, NASA's founding legislation.

Toward a Rationale for a National Space Program: this recently declassified study by the Rand Corporation dates from July 1959. For the Web, it is broken into two halves of true-graphics pdf files. Click here to see part one and here to see part two.