A US company that became the principal contractor for the Apollo project and produced its command module (CM) and service module (SM). It also built the second stage for the Saturn V launch vehicle (see saturn rocket) and the docking module for the 1975 Apollo–Soyuz Test Project.
The company was established in 1928 as North American Aviation and formed Rocketdyne as a separate division in 1955. North American merged with Rockwell Standard Corporation in 1967 to become North American Rockwell and in 1973 became Rockwell International. In 1996 its space and defence divisions merged with the Boeing Company.
Its other projects included the X-10 supersonic aircraft in the 1950s and the X-15 rocket plane in the 1960s.