In 1959, the Soviet space program took another step forward with the launch of Luna 2, the first space probe to hit the moon. Space Race Heats Up: Men (And Chimps) Orbit Earth The second, led by the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA), the Air Force and a new organization called the National Reconnaissance Office (the existence of which was kept classified until the early 1990s) was code-named Corona it would use orbiting satellites to gather intelligence on the Soviet Union and its allies. Air Force, dedicated itself to exploiting the military potential of space. Eisenhower signed a public order creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA), a federal agency dedicated to space exploration.Įisenhower also created two national security-oriented space programs that would operate simultaneously with NASA’s program. Army under the direction of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. In 1958, the United States launched its own satellite, Explorer I, designed by the U.S. Arguably the most famous was Apollo 13, whose crew managed to survive an explosion of the oxygen tank in their spacecraft's service module on the way to the moon. air space–made gathering intelligence about Soviet military activities particularly urgent.ĭid you know? After Apollo 11 landed on the moon's surface in July 1969, six more Apollo missions followed by the end of 1972. In addition, this demonstration of the overwhelming power of the R-7 missile–seemingly capable of delivering a nuclear warhead into U.S. In the United States, space was seen as the next frontier, a logical extension of the grand American tradition of exploration, and it was crucial not to lose too much ground to the Soviets.

Sputnik’s launch came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one, to most Americans. On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile launched Sputnik (Russian for “traveler”), the world’s first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be placed into the Earth’s orbit. Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for Cold War competition.

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