NASA
1958-present
Who
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration - an independent agency of the U.S. federal government, established 29 Jul 1958 (succeeding NACA, 1915-1958), headquartered in Washington, D.C., with ten field centers.
Why it matters
14,000 civil servants (2026) plus tens of thousands of contractors - and it runs on open data: the APOD, the image library (hundreds of thousands of images) and the near-Earth object feed that power this bot are public APIs anyone can query. The spinoff database (spinoff.nasa.gov) catalogues technology that came out of the space program. The Moon landings were never disputed by the Soviet Union - the greatest rival of the Cold War - and in 1975 American and Soviet crews docked in space (Apollo-Soyuz).
Lineage
Built on NACA's aeronautics research. Enabled the whole spacecraft family in this bot - and the open data that makes it possible for anyone to check.