The Space Race

The Space Race was a competition between the US and the Soviet Union on their achievements in going to space. After WWII both nations had conflicts that started the Cold War. During this time their achievements about space were brought up and they raced to put a satellite in space orbiting earth and other big new things about being in space that you probably heard about. Both sides tried proving that their technology, military, and economic system were better or that just in general their country was better than the other. The race really started with trying to see which country had better missiles or nuclear weapons because they were still at war.

The competition began on August 2, 1955, when the Soviet Union responded to the US announcement four days earlier of intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year, by declaring they would also launch a satellite "in the near future". The race gained attention when everyone found out the Soviet Union had a satellite they were going to launch. In 1957 the Soviet Union launched the first ever satellite, Sputnik. The USSR had an early lead in the race when they also launched the first human to space, Yuri Gagarin, he was the first person to orbit the earth in a small capsule like spacecraft Vostok 1. In 1958, the U.S. launched its own satellite, Explorer I, designed by the U.S. Army under the direction of rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun. That same year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a public order creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a federal agency dedicated to space exploration. NASA engineers then made a capsule-like spacecraft smaller than Vostok. They tested it with chimpanzees until May 5, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space. Later that May, President John F. Kennedy made the bold, public claim that the U.S. would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. In February 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, and by the end of that year NASA had plans for Project Apollo ready.

Project Apollo was a plan to land on the moon. Apollo suffered a setback in January 1967, when three astronauts were killed after their spacecraft caught fire during a launch simulation. The fire was caused by an electrical spark and quickly grew out of control, fed by the spacecraft's atmosphere of pure oxygen at greater than one standard atmosphere. The launch of Apollo 8 happened in December 1968, it was the first manned space mission to orbit the moon. On July 16, 1969, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins went on the Apollo 11 space mission, the first lunar landing attempt. After landing successfully on July 20, Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon’s surface; he famously called the moment “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” By landing on the moon, the United States effectively “won” the space race that had begun with Sputnik’s launch in 1957. For their part, the Soviets made four failed attempts to launch a lunar landing craft between 1969 and 1972, including a spectacular launch-pad explosion in July 1969. In 1975, the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission sent three U.S. astronauts into space aboard an Apollo spacecraft that docked in orbit with a Soviet-made Soyuz vehicle. When the commanders of the two crafts officially greeted each other, their “handshake in space” served to symbolize the gradual improvement of U.S.-Soviet relations in the late Cold War-era.

China was the third nation to join the space race. They launched their first satellite in 1970 and their first astronaut in space in 2003. NASA kept the United States ahead in the space race but now SpaceX came in and helped stay in the lead against China. China has been making improvements and might be landing humans on Mars before the US. The Space Race is still relevant to lots of people that even Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, joined the race and traveled to space. The race will go on forever and hopefully soon we will all get to experience space.