Some style guides distinguish between an acronym (Nasa, say the word as it's written) and initialism (ISS, say each letter)

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		That certainly explains it; this particular acronym is even called out distinctly in the style guide. But "Nasa" still looks weirder to me than "NASA" does. Like writing "The Scsi bus went Awol" instead of "The SCSI bus went AWOL" also looks weird.