Answer:
Culturally they are “nations”, but in the general way most use this term, the Navajo Nation is not “its own separate nation”. They are more like a separate state or US territory. In a way, they are similar to Puerto Rico.
The event that resulted in the creation of NASA would be when the Russian's first launched the Sputnik into space and JFK told America that we will be the first on the moon and that we will not let the Russian's win this race. Which hence why we called it the space race.
