NASTRAN is a finite element analysis (FEA) program that was originally developed for NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

 in the late 1960s under United States government funding for the Aerospace industry. The MacNeal-Schwendler Corporation (MSC) was one of the principal and original developers of the public domain NASTRAN code. NASTRAN source code is integrated in a number of different software packages, which are distributed by a range of companies.
The 1964 annual review of NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

's structural dynamics research program revealed that the research centers were separately developing structural analysis software that was specific to their own needs.