What is NASA for besides the space shuttle program that ended?

NASA is planing to put a man in the asteroid belt by 2025 and one on Mars by 2030. They canceled plans for a moon base to pay for it.

The space shuttles were a pretty small part of NASA. They were built to ferry people back and forth to the space station and to assist in building the station. They were built before the station knowing that it would be built. I still find it confusing that so many people are surprised that these 30 and 40 year old spacecraft were retired. If someone asked you to get on an airliner to fly across the country that was designed 40 years ago and built 30 years ago you'd tell them they were crazy. But astronauts are just supposed to keep riding back and forth to orbit on these relative antiques? Every other spacecraft in history was used once and discarded. It was long past time to retire the shuttles. NASA still sends people to the space station today, they just rent space on Russian rockets for the time being until the shuttle's replacement, the Orion that is still being tested, is finished. They send probes all over the solar system. And you do know that the first A in NASA is for aeronautics right? They still do research into various aeronautical fields. The shape of almost every wing used on aircraft today was created by NASA engineers.

The space shuttle was ONE program out of the close to 100 which NASA operates currently.

NASA has hundred of Research and Operational projects besides just going for manned missions. Check out NASA's website for details.

Here a list of just SOME of the NASA missions. Even for the ones that are not flying in space anymore, we are still analyzing the data from the missions. Even the space shuttle program is not ended just because there are no more launches -- it will be many years before all the hardware is wrapped up and disposed of, the plans and reports archived, and all the data given out to the engineers and scientists who need it.

I count 132 projects on this PARTIAL list; about 30 are no longer flying. For more information on any of these, just Google "NASA <name of project>"

ACE

AIM

Apollo

Apollo-Soyuz

Aqua

Aquarius

ARCTAS

ARTEMIS

ASTRO-1

ASTRO-2

Astro-E2

Aura

CALIPSO

Cassini

CHAMP

Chandra

CINDI

Clementine

Cloudsat

Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory

Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)

Dawn

Deep Impact

Earth Radiation Budget Satellite

EPOXI

Exploration Plans

Explorer

Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer

FAST

Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

Fire and Smoke

FUSE

GALEX

Galileo

Gemini

Genesis

Geotail

GLAST

Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM)

Glory

GOES-N

GOES-O

GOES-P

GOES-R

GRAIL

Gravity Probe-B

Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment

Herschel

HETE-2

Hinode (Solar-b)

Hubble

Hurricanes

IBEX

ICEsat

IMAGE

International Space Station

James Webb Space Telescope

Jason

Juno

J2X

Kepler

LADEE

LAGEOS 1 and 2

Landsat

LDCM

LCROSS

LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter)

Magellan

Mars Exploration Rover

Mars Global Surveyor

Mars Odyssey

Mars Pathfinder

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Mars Science Laboratory

MAVEN

Mercury

MESSENGER

Mini-RF

Moon Mineralogy Mapper

Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR)

New Horizons

NMP EO-1

NOAA-N

NOAA-N Prime

NPP

NuSTAR

Ocean Surface Topography Mission

Operation Ice Bridge

Orbiting Carbon Observatory

Phoenix

Pioneer

POES

Polar

QuikSCAT

Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP)

Ranger

RHESSI

Roentgen Satellite (ROSAT)

RXTE

SDO

SERVIR

Shuttle Radar Topography Mission

Skylab

Small Satellites

SOFIA

SOHO

Solar Anomalous and Magnetospherice Particle Explorer (SAMPEX)

Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment

SORCE

Space Shuttle

Spitzer

Stardust-NExT

STEREO

Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS)

Surveyor

Suzaku

SWIFT

TDRS

Terra

THEMIS

TIMED

TOMS-EP

TOPEX/Poseidon

TRACE

Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission

Ulysses

Upper Atmosphere Radiation Satellite (UARS)

Viking

Voyager

Wide-Field Infrared Explorer

WIND

WISE

We still go up in space to the space station, nasa puts up and keeps up 90% of the satilites that are orbiting us right now, they study other planets and moons allong with othr solar systems. They send rovers to mars etc.

NASA maintains and operates all the satellites orbiting the earth doing everything from predicting weather to the providing the GPS directions in your car to providing communications such as international phone calls and your television is brought to you courtesy of NASA which operates and maintains the TV satellites that your cable company uses to get programs. Even commercial airlines rely on NASA operated satellites to find their way to their destinations.

In addition there are many Military applications such as spy satellites, providing military aircraft, naval vessel and even ground forces guidance to where they need to go. ,

National Aeronautics.

NASA regularly revolutionizes commercial aeronautics (airplanes). They are not just about space.