The Space Race was a technological and ideological competition between the Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the Russian: Союз Советских Социалистических Республик (help·info), tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, IPA [sɐˈjʊs sɐˈvʲeʦkʲɪx səʦɪ (USSR) and the United States ^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language (USA) for supremacy in outer-space exploration during the mid-to-late 20th century. The term refers to a specific period in human history, 1957-1975, and does not include subsequent efforts by these or other nations to explore space. The race involved pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavor. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon, sub-orbital and orbital human spaceflight Human spaceflight is spaceflight with a human crew and possibly passengers. This makes it unlike robotic space probes or remotely-controlled satellites. Human spaceflight is sometimes called manned spaceflight, a term now deprecated by major space agencies in favor of its gender-neutral alternative around the earth, and piloted voyages to the Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite[nb 4] and is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System. It is the largest natural satellite in the Solar System relative to the size of its planet, a quarter the diameter of Earth and 1/81 its mass, and is the second densest satellite after Io. It is in synchronous rotation with Earth, always.

The Space Race era was a highly visible aspect of the Cold War The Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition existing after World War II (1939–1945), primarily between the Soviet Union and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, particularly the United States. Although the primary participants' military forces never, with its origins in the missile-based arms race The term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for real or apparent military supremacy. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation. Nowadays the term is commonly used to describe any competition where there between these nations. It was motivated by the desire to display scientific and technological superiority, which translated to military strength. It effectively began with the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 Sputnik 1 Russian: "Спутник-1" Russian pronunciation: [ˈsputnʲɪk], "Satellite-1", ПС-1 ) was the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, and was the first in a series of satellites collectively known as the Sputnik program on 4 October 1957, and concluded with the co-operative Apollo-Soyuz Test Project The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (Russian: Экспериментальный полёт «Союз» — «Аполлон») (Eksperimantalniy polyot Soyuz-Apollon) flew in July 1975. It was the last Apollo mission, the first joint U.S./Soviet space flight, and the last manned US space mission until the first Space Shuttle flight in April 1981 mission in July 1975 as a symbol of the detente Détente is the easing of strained relations, especially in a political situation. The term is often used in reference to the general easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 70s, a thawing at a period roughly in the middle of the Cold War. In the Soviet Union, détente was known in Russian: as разрядка between the USA and USSR. In between, it became a focus of the cultural, technological, and ideological rivalry between the two nations. It provided spin-off benefits including unprecedented increases in education funding, and spending on pure research and development that accelerated technological and scientific advancements. An unintended effect was that it also was partially responsible for the birth of the environmental movement, as this was the first time in history that humans came to see their home-world as it really was – when the first color pictures from space showed a fragile blue planet bordered by the blackness of space.

Contents 1 World War II foundations 1.1 Cold War origins 2 First artificial satellites 3 Lunar probes 4 Animals in space 5 First humans in space 6 US challenge: to the Moon 6.1 Apollo program 6.2 Voskhod program 6.3 Project Gemini 7 USSR secretly accepts 8 First space mission deaths 9 Race to the Moon continues 10 Earth orbital space stations 11 Military applications 12 Robotic planetary probes 12.1 Venus 12.2 Mars 13 Commercial applications 13.1 Communications satellites 14 End of the Space Race 15 Organization, funding, and economic impact 16 Legacy 16.1 Advances in technology and education 16.2 The Environmental Movement 17 Notes 18 References 19 See also 20 External links

World War II foundations

In the late-1920s, German The Weimar Republic ( Weimarer Republik , IPA: [ˈvaɪmaʁɐ ʁepuˈbliːk]) is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government. It was named after Weimar, the city where the constitutional assembly took place. Its official name was Deutsches Reich (sometimes aerospace engineers experimented with liquid-fuel rockets A rocket or rocket vehicle is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle which obtains thrust from a rocket engine. In all rockets, the exhaust is formed entirely from propellants carried within the rocket before use. Rocket engines work by action and reaction. Rocket engines push rockets forwards simply by throwing their exhaust backwards capable of reaching high altitudes and traversing long distances. In 1932, the Reichswehr The Reichswehr listen (German for "National Defence") formed the military organisation of Germany from 1919 until 1935, when it was renamed the Wehrmacht ("Defence Force") (German Army), considered the use of rockets as long-range artillery Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with mechanical projectile weapons,artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons. These engines comprise specialised devices which use some form of stored, to get around theTreaty of Versailles The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I were dealt with in separate treaties ban on research and development of long-range cannons A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellants to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees, depending on their intended use on the battlefield. The.

During the Second World War World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's nations, including all great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. The war involved the mobilisation of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history. In a state of, Wernher von Braun Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun was a German-American rocket scientist, astronautics engineer and space architect, becoming one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Germany and the United States. He was a member of the Nazi party and a commissioned SS officer. Wernher von Braun was said to be the, an aspiring rocket engineer Aerospace engineering is the branch of engineering behind the design, construction and science of aircraft and spacecraft. It is broken into two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. The former deals with craft that stay within Earth's atmosphere, and the latter deals with craft that operate with dreams of flying men to the moon, was employed by Nazi Germany Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany under the government of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party , from 1933 to 1945. Third Reich (German: Drittes Reich) denotes the Nazi state as the historical successor to the mediæval Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) and to the modern German Empire (1 to develop rockets for use as weapons.^[1] In 1942, as Technical Director of the Army Rocket Center at Peenemünde Peenemünde is a village in the northeast of the German (Western) part of Usedom island. It stands near the mouth(s) of the Peene river (the name translates as Penne-mouth), on the westmost edge of a long sand-spit on the German Baltic coast. The area includes the 1992 Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde, an Anchor Point of the European Route of, his team built the A-4 rocket, which became the first vehicle to reach outer space Outer space is the void that exists beyond any celestial body including the Earth. It is not completely empty (i.e. a perfect vacuum), but contains a low density of particles, predominantly hydrogen plasma, as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, and neutrinos. Theoretically, it also contains dark matter and dark energy during its test flight program in 1942 and 1943. By 1943, Germany began mass producing the A-4 as the Vergeltungswaffe 2 The V-2 rocket , technical name A4, was a long-range ballistic missile that was developed at the beginning of the Second World War in Nazi Germany, specifically targeted at Belgium and sites in southeastern England. The rocket was the world's first long-range combat-ballistic missile and first human artifact to achieve sub-orbital spaceflight. It (“Vengeance Weapon” 2), a ballistic missile A ballistic missile is a missile that follows a sub-orbital ballistic flightpath with the objective of delivering one or more warheads to a predetermined target. The missile is only guided during the relatively brief initial powered phase of flight and its course is subsequently governed by the laws of orbital mechanics and ballistics. To date, with a 300-kilometer (190 mi) range carrying a 1,000-kilogram (2,200 lb) warhead The term warhead refers to the explosive material and detonator that is delivered by a missile, rocket, or torpedo. Its supersonic speed meant there was no defense against it, and little warning on detection by radar Radar is an object detection system that uses electromagnetic waves to identify the range, altitude, direction, or speed of both moving and fixed objects such as aircraft, ships, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the U.S. Navy as an acronym for radio detection and ranging. The term has since. Germany used the weapon to bombard southern England and parts of Allied-liberated western Europe from 1944 until 1945.^[2] After the War, the A-4 became the basis of early American and Soviet rocket designs.^[3][4]

At War’s end, American, British, and Soviet scientific intelligence teams competed to capture the German rockets, designs, and engineers Aerospace engineering is the branch of engineering behind the design, construction and science of aircraft and spacecraft. It is broken into two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. The former deals with craft that stay within Earth's atmosphere, and the latter deals with craft that operate.^[5] Each of the Allies captured a share of the available German scientists, but the US benefited most with Operation Paperclip Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II (1939–45). It was executed by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), and in the context of the burgeoning Soviet–American Cold War (1945–91), one, recruiting von Braun and many others, who later helped develop the American missile and space exploration programs.^[3]

Cold War origins

The former World War II allies, the US and the USSR, became involved in the Cold War The Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition existing after World War II (1939–1945), primarily between the Soviet Union and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, particularly the United States. Although the primary participants' military forces never, a period of political conflict and military tension. The US defense strategy included a large Air Force The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare, space warfare, and cyberwarfare branch of the U.S. armed forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on 18 September 1947 under the National Security Act of 1947. It is the most recent branch employing air-refuelable Aerial refueling, also called air refueling, in-flight refueling , air-to-air refueling (AAR) or tanking, is the process of transferring fuel from one aircraft (the tanker) to another (the receiver) during flight. Applied to helicopters, it is known as HAR for Helicopter Aerial Refueling.[citation needed], strategic bombers A strategic bomber is a heavy type aircraft designed to drop large amounts of ordnance onto a distant target for the purposes of debilitating an enemy's capacity to wage war. Unlike tactical bombers, which are used in the battle zone to attack troops and military equipment, strategic bombers are built to fly into an enemy's heartland to destroy and advance bases in Europe and Turkey Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey ( Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (help·info)), is a Eurasian country situated in the Anatolian peninsula, located in Western Asia, and Eastern Thrace, located in southeastern Europe. Turkey is one of the six independent Turkic states. Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest;, close to Soviet airspace. Since the USSR had neither an equivalent air force, nor advance bases near the continental US, Stalin ordered the development of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles An intercontinental ballistic missile is a ballistic missile with a long range (greater than 5,500 km or 3,500 miles) typically designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more nuclear warheads). Due to their great range and firepower, in an all-out nuclear war, land-based and submarine-based ballistic missiles would carry most of the (ICBMs) in 1947, to counter the American threat.^[6]

The Soviet rocket engineers were led by Sergey Korolyov Sergey Pavlovich Korolyov , (Russian: Сергей Павлович Королёв Sergej Pavlovič Korolëv; Ukrainian: Сергій Павлович Корольов Sergij Pavlovyč Korol'ov), (January 12 [O.S. December 30, 1906] 1907, Zhytomyr – January 14, 1966, Moscow), was the head Soviet rocket engineer and designer during the Space Race. He had been involved in space clubs and early Soviet rocket design in the 1930s, but was arrested in 1938 during Joseph Stalin's Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. In the years following Lenin's death in 1924, he rose to become the leader of the Soviet Union and imprisoned for six years in Siberia.^[7] After the war, he became the USSR's chief rocket and spacecraft engineer, essentially the Soviets' counterpart to Von Braun.^[8] His identity was kept a state secret throughout the Cold War, and he was identified publicly only as "the Chief Designer."^[8] In the west, his name was only revealed when he died in 1966.^[8]

Soviet officials moved most of the captured German rocket specialists to Gorodomlya Island Gorodomlya Island is located on the Seliger Lake in the Tver Oblast of Russia. It is 200 miles northwest of Moscow on Lake Seliger Seliger is a lake in Tver Oblast and, in the extreme northern part, Novgorod Oblast of Russia, in the northwest of the Valdai Hills, a part of the Volga basin. Absolute height: 205 m, area 212 km², average depth 5.8 m, about 240 kilometres (150 mi) northwest of Moscow.^[9] They were not allowed to participate in Soviet missile design, but were used as problem-solving consultants to the Soviet engineers.^[6] They were to help in the following areas: consult on creating a Soviet version of the A-4; work on "organizational schemes"; research in improving the A-4 main engine; development of a 100-ton engine; assistance in the "layout" of plant production rooms; and preparation of rocket assembly using German components.^[9] With their help, particullarly Helmut Groettrup's group, Korolyov reverse-engineered Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object or system through analysis of its structure, function and operation. It often involves taking something (e.g., a mechanical device, electronic component, or software program) apart and analyzing its workings in detail to be used in maintenance, or to the A-4 and built his own version of the rocket, the R-1 The R-1 rocket was a copy of the German V-2 rocket manufactured by the Soviet Union. Even though it was a copy, it was manufactured using Soviet industrial plants and gave the Soviets valuable experience which later enabled the USSR to construct its own much more capable rockets, in 1948.^[10] Later, he developed his own distinct designs, though many of these designs were influenced by the Groettrup Group's G4-R10 design from 1949.^[10] The Germans were eventually repatriated in 1951-53.^[10]

In 1953, Korolyov was given the go-ahead to develop the R-7 Semyorka The R-7 Semyorka was the world's first true intercontinental ballistic missile, deployed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War from 1959 to 1968. To the West it was known by the NATO reporting name SS-6 Sapwood and within the Soviet Union by the GRAU index 8K71. In modified form, it launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, into orbit, rocket, basically four G4s mated together with a central sustainer stage.^[10] It was successfully tested in August 1957 and became the world's first ICBM. It would later be used to launch the first satellite into space, and derivatives would launch all piloted Soviet spacecraft.

The United States, in contrast to the Soviets, allowed von Braun's team to actively participate in missile development. Competition among the U.S. armed services meant that each force (Army The United States Army is the branch of the United States armed forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven uniformed services. The modern Army has its roots in the Continental Army which was formed on 14 June 1775, before the establishment of the, Navy The United States Navy is the sea branch of the United States armed forces. It is one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. As of 31 December 2008, the U.S. Navy had about 331,682 personnel on active duty and 124,000 in the Navy Reserve. It operates 284 ships in active service and more than 3,700 aircraft. The U.S. Navy is the and Air Force), developed its own ICBM programs. The Air Force initiated ICBM research in 1945 with the MX-774 MX-774 was the United States' first attempt at an intercontinental ballistic missile . In 1946, Consolidated-Vultee was given an Army Air Forces research contract and began design and development of the MX-774, which led to Convair's development of the Atlas ICBM.^[11] However, its funding was cancelled and only three partially successful launches were conducted in 1947.^[11] In 1951, the Air Force began a new ICBM program called MX-1593, and by 1955 was receiving top-priority funding.^[11] The MX-1593 program evolved to become the Atlas-A, with its maiden launch occurring on 11 June 1957, becoming the first successful American ICBM.^[11] Its upgraded version, the Atlas-D rocket, would later serve as an operational nuclear ICBM and be used as the orbital launch vehicle for Project Mercury Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States. It ran from 1959 through 1963 with the goal of putting a human in orbit around the Earth. The Mercury-Atlas 6 flight on February 20, 1962, was the first Mercury flight to achieve this goal. Early planning and research was carried out by the National Advisory Committee and the remote-controlled Agena Target Vehicle The Agena target vehicle was a spacecraft used by NASA during its Gemini program to develop and practice orbital space rendezvous and docking techniques in preparation for the Apollo program lunar missions used in Project Gemini Project Gemini was the second human spaceflight program of NASA, the civilian space agency of the United States government. Project Gemini operated between Projects Mercury and Apollo, with 10 manned flights occurring in 1965 and 1966. Its objective was to develop techniques for advanced space travel, notably those necessary for Project Apollo,.^[11]

First artificial satellites

On July 29, 1957, in recognition of the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year The International Geophysical Year was an international scientific project that lasted from July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958. It marked the end of a long period during the cold war when scientific interchange between East and West was seriously interrupted. All major countries took part with the exception of mainland China and Republic of China (, the White House announced that the U.S. intended to launch satellites by the spring of 1958. This became known as Project Vanguard Project Vanguard was a program managed by the United States Naval Research Laboratory , which intended to launch the first artificial satellite into Earth orbit using a Vanguard rocket as the launch vehicle. On July 31, the Soviets announced that they intended to launch a satellite by the fall of 1957.

Sputnik 1 Sputnik 1 Russian: "Спутник-1" Russian pronunciation: [ˈsputnʲɪk], "Satellite-1", ПС-1 ) was the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, and was the first in a series of satellites collectively known as the Sputnik program was the size of a large beachball, weighed more than 80 kg and orbited the Earth for more than two months. (Replica pictured) Explorer 1 model at NASA news conference.

On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, on Korolyov's R-7 missile, thus beginning the Space Race and making the USSR the first space power.^[12] The Soviet government derived great propaganda value from the launch, to boost the morale of its own citizens and claiming to the world proof of the superiority of Soviet communism over Western capitalism.^[13]

In the meantime, a public and embarrassing Project Vanguard launch failure had occurred at Cape Canaveral. But nearly four months after the launch of Sputnik 1, the United States successfully launched its first satellite, Explorer 1, with an alternate program on an accelerated schedule, becoming the second space power. Explorer 1 flight data confirmed the existence of the radiation belt theorized by James Van Allen, considered one of the outstanding discoveries of the International Geophysical Year.

Sputnik's success and Vanguard's failure caused such political turmoil in the United States that the period is known as the Sputnik crisis. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration quickly enacted several initiatives to address the perceived technical shortcomings in the United States. Within a year, the United States Congress passed legislation creating NASA, as well as the National Defense Education Act, the most far-reaching federally-sponsored education initiative in the nation's history.^{[citation needed]} The NDEA authorized expenditures of more than $1 billion for a wide range of reforms including new school construction, fellowships and loans to encourage promising students to seek higher education, new efforts in vocational education to meet critical manpower shortages in the defense industry, and a host of other programs.^[14] In 1959, NASA initiated Project Mercury to put a man in space.

Apart from their political value as technological achievements, these first satellites had real scientific value. Sputnik helped to determine the density of the upper atmosphere, through measurement from the ground of the satellite's orbital changes. It also provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere. Pressurized nitrogen, in the satellite's body, provided the first opportunity for meteoroid detection. If a meteoroid penetrated the satellite's outer hull, it would be detected by the temperature data sent back to Earth. Two photometers were on board for measuring solar radiation (ultraviolet and x-ray emissions) and cosmic rays.^{[citation needed]}

Lunar probes

Lunokhod 1 lunar rover built by the Soviet Union. Lunokhod was the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world. Main article: Moon landing

Following the Soviet success in sending the first satellite into orbit, the Americans focused their efforts on sending a probe to the Moon. The Pioneer program made several attempts which failed. This was followed by the Ranger program, which succeeded.

The Soviets launched Luna 1 on 4 January 1959, which became the first probe to reach the vicinity of the Moon. The first craft to reach the surface of the Moon was Luna 2, launched on 12 September 1959.

Later, the United States conducted the Lunar Orbiter program to map potential piloted landing sites, and the robotic Surveyor program achieved soft landings.

Animals in space

Main article: Animals in space

Before sending men into space, both countries took the cautious approach of sending mammals in automated spacecraft first, sending medical instrumentation back to Earth.

The Soviet Union launched the first animal in Earth orbit, the dog Laika (in English, "Barker") on Sputnik 2, November 3, 1957. The dog was not meant to be returned to Earth alive, being given a finite amount of air, food and water planned to run out before the orbit decayed due to atmospheric drag and the craft burned up like a meteor, which it did on April 14, 1958. In October 2002, it was revealed that a malfunction inhibited operation of the temperature control system, and Laika had actually died five to seven hours after launch from overheating and stress.

In 1960, the Soviets orbited the dogs Belka and Strelka and successfully returned them.^[15]

The U.S. launched two chimpanzees: Ham sub-orbitally on Mercury-Redstone 2, January 31, 1961; and Enos for two of three planned orbits on Mercury Atlas 5, November 29, 1961. Both chimps were successfully recovered alive.

First humans in space

The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space when he entered orbit in Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, a day now celebrated as a holiday in Russia and in many other Eastern bloc countries. He orbited the Earth for 108 minutes, but not as a pilot. Russian doctors did not know whether a cosmonaut would be disabled by weightlessness, so his manual controls were disabled and ground technicians controlled the craft. The lead architects behind the Vostok 1 mission were the rocket engineers Korolyov and Kerim Kerimov.^[16]

Twenty-three days later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space aboard the Mercury capsule Freedom 7. Though he did not achieve orbit, unlike Gagarin he was the first to exercise manual control of his spacecraft's attitude and retro-rocket firing.^[17] The first Soviet cosmonaut to exercise manual control was Gherman Titov in Vostok 2 on 6 August 1961.^[18] On February 20, 1962 John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, completing three orbits in Friendship 7. His capability of manual attitude control became crucial when the automatic system failed.

The Soviet Union achieved the first dual piloted flights, Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 on 11–15 August 1962. The two spacecraft came within approximately 6.5 kilometres (4.0 mi) of one another, close enough for radio communication.^[19] While this represented a significant technical accomplishment to launch two spacecraft from the same pad in a very short period of time, there was no capability of the spacecraft to maneuver close to each other (within visual range), and over the course of the missions they continued to drift as far as 2,850 kilometres (1,770 mi) apart.

The USSR launched the first woman in space, and also the first civilian, Valentina Tereshkova on June 16, 1963 in Vostok 6. Launching a woman was reportedly Koroloyov's idea, but was done purely for propaganda value. Tereshkova was one of a small corps of female cosmonauts who were amateur parachutists, but Tereshkova was the only one to fly. The USSR didn't send another woman into space until 1982, in response to the United States opening their astronaut program to women.

US challenge: to the Moon

On April 20, 1961, about one week after Gagarin's flight, United States President John F. Kennedy sent a memo to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, asking Johnson to look into the status of America's space program, and into programs that could offer NASA the opportunity to catch up.^[20] Johnson responded about one week later, concluding that the US needed to do much more to reach a position of leadership, and recommending that a piloted moon landing was far enough in the future that it was likely the United States would achieve it first.^[21]

Apollo program

Main article: Apollo program

On May 25, Kennedy announced his support for the Apollo program in an address to a special joint session of Congress:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.^[22]

He began forming a policy of justification for the Space Race as a vital national security front in the Cold War, which he expressed to the public in his famous September 12, 1962 speech at Rice Stadium where he stated:

For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war.^{[cite this quote]}

Kennedy expressed this even more explicitly in a November 21, 1962 recorded White House meeting with Administrator James E. Webb and others:

This is important for political reasons, international political reasons... Because otherwise we shouldn't be spending this kind of money, because I'm not that interested in space. I think it's good, I think we ought to know about it, we're ready to spend reasonable amounts of money. But...we’ve spent fantastic expenditures, we’ve wrecked our budget on all these other domestic programs, and the only justification for it, in my opinion, to do it in the pell-mell fashion is because we hope to beat them [the Soviets] and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple of years, by God, we passed them. I think it would be a helluva thing for us.^[23]

Meanwhile, the Soviet government was showing ambivalence about human visits to the Moon. Premier Khrushchev wanted neither "defeat" by another power, nor the expense of such a project. In October 1963 he characterized the Soviet Union as "not at present planning flight by cosmonauts to the Moon",^{[citation needed]} while adding that they had not dropped out of the race.

Kennedy proposed joint programs, such as a Moon landing by U.S. and Soviet astronauts and improved weather-monitoring satellites. Khrushchev rejected these ideas, saying he sensed an attempt to steal Russian space technology.

After Johnson became President on Kennedy's death in 1963, his appeal to Kennedy's legacy and continued staunch support kept the Apollo program on track.

Voskhod program

Main article: Voskhod programme

As the USSR's principal rocket engineer and designer, Korolyov had planned further, long-term missions for the Vostok spacecraft, but upon the American announcement of the Apollo program, Premier Khrushchev demanded more technological firsts, wherein he politically provoked desperate measures from his space program to produce results. Korolyov already had begun designing the Vostok's replacement, the next-generation Soyuz spacecraft, a multi-cosmonaut spacecraft. However, Premier Khrushchev's demands for more space-firsts, in the short-term, limited Korolyov to modifying the one-man Vostok to meet this agenda.

Voskhod 1 and Voskhod 2 space capsules

On 12 October 1964, the "Chief Designer" delivered the Soviet Premier his next space-first with the launching of Voskhod 1, the first multi-crew member space flight, with three cosmonauts in a modified Vostok spacecraft. The USSR further touted another technological achievement by this mission: the first space flight in a shirt-sleeve-environment. However, flying without spacesuits was not due to safety improvements in the spacecraft's environmental systems, but due to its limited cabin space, that did not allow for spacesuits, and exposed the cosmonauts to significant risk in the event of a potentially fatal cabin depressurization. This feat would not be repeated until Apollo Command Module, which flew in 1968, and was purposely designed from the outset to transport three astronauts in ashirt-sleeve environment while in space.

On 18 March 1965, about a week before the first American piloted Gemini program space flight, the USSR accelorated the Space Race competition, by launching the two-cosmonaut Voskhod 2 mission with Pavel Belyayev and Alexey Leonov. Voskhod 2's design modifications included the first airlock to allow forextravehicular activity (EVA), also known as a spacewalk. Leonov performed the first-ever EVA as part of the mission. A fatality was narrowly avoided when Leonov's spacesuit expanded in the vacuum of space, preventing him from re-entering the spacecraft. He had to improvise, and perform the potentially fatal partial depressurization of his spacesuit in order to re-enter the airlock. He succeeded in safely re-entering the ship, but he and Belyayev faced further challenges when an improperly timed retrorocket firing caused the Voskhod 2 to land 1,600 kilometres (990 mi) off target.

Leonid Brezhnev deposed Premier Khrushchev as Soviet government leader in late 1964, and after this flight, ended the technologically deficient Voskhod program, cancelling Voskhod flights 3 through 6. There would be a two-year pause in Soviet piloted space flights, while Voskhod's replacement, the Soyuz spacecraft, continued its design and development.

Project Gemini

Main article: Project Gemini

Focused by the commitment to a moon landing, in January 1962 the US introduced a two-man spaceflight program known as Project Gemini, which would support Apollo by developing the key spaceflight technologies of space rendezvous and docking of two craft, flight durations of sufficient length, and Extra-vehicular Activity (EVA) for extended periods, doing useful work rather than just "walking in space." Although taking a year longer than planned to reach its first flight, Gemini took advantage of the two-year hiatus after Voskhod, enabling the US to catch up with the Soviets's lead in piloted spaceflight and pass them by achieving several significant firsts over the course of ten piloted missions:

• On Gemini 3 (March 1965), astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom and John W. Young became the first to demonstrate ability to change their craft's orbit.
• On Gemini 5 (August 1965), astronauts L. Gordon Cooper and Charles "Pete" Conrad set a record of almost eight days in space, long enough for a piloted lunar mission.
• On Gemini 6A (December 1965), Command Pilot Wally Schirra achieved the first piloted space rendezvous with Gemini 7, actively matching his orbit identically to the other craft and station-keeping at distances as close as 1 foot (0.30 m) and kept station for three orbits.^[24]
• Gemini 7 also set a piloted space endurance record of fourteen days for Frank Borman and James A. Lovell, which stood until both nations started launching space laboratories in the early 1970s.
• On Gemini 8 (March 1966), Command Pilot Neil Armstrong achieved the first docking with another craft, an unpiloted Agena target vehicle.
• Gemini 11 (September 1966), commanded by Conrad, achieved the first direct-ascent rendezvous with its Agena target on the first orbit, and used the Agena's rocket to achieve an apogee of 742 nautical miles (1,374 km), an earth orbit record never broken as of 28 July 2010 T 14:35 UTC..
• On Gemini 12 (November 1966), Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin spent over five hours working comfortably in three (EVA) periods, finally proving humans could perform productive tasks outside spacecraft. (This goal proved to be the most difficult to achieve.)

Most of the novice pilots on the early missions would command the later missions. In this way, Project Gemini built up spaceflight experience for the pool of astronauts who would be chosen to fly the Apollo lunar missions.

USSR secretly accepts

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be and removed. (April 2010)

Main article: Soviet Moonshot

In 1964, Korolyov pitched to Khrushchev a "Soyuz L3 complex spacecraft" consisting of a Soyuz 7K-LOK command ship with a piloted Lunniy Korabl (lunar lander), launched by an N1 super heavy launch vehicle. But Khrushchev directed a second team headed by Vladimir Chelomey to start building a Soyuz derivative cislunar (looping around the Moon) craft called Zond to be launched on the existing Proton heavy booster, aiming for a planned first piloted flight in 1966.

Zond (Soyuz 7K-L1) circumlunar spacecraft

In October 1964 Khrushchev was ousted, and the new Soviet leadership gave Korolyov the backing for a Moon landing effort and brought all piloted projects back under his direction. This included the Proton-L1/Zond with a first piloted lunar flyby now planned for 1967, and an N1-L3 piloted landing program planned for 1968. All piloted lunar plans were kept highly secret from the US and its western allies for nearly the entire remainder of the Cold War, and have only been brought to light starting in the 1990s.

In 1963-1967, Yuri Gagarin was head of a team of cosmonauts slated for two Soviet flyby and landing piloted moon missions. The first open announcement about this was made by Tereshkova during her visit to Cuba in 1963.^{[citation needed]}

But then Korolyov died on January 14, 1966, of causes which remain uncertain. He had a variety of medical problems, including a kidney disorder brought on by his imprisonment under Stalin.

First space mission deaths

Likely the worst disaster during the Space Race was the R-16 failure in 1960, when improper shutdown and control procedures during hasty on-pad repairs caused the missile's second stage engine to fire straight onto the full propellant tanks in the still-attached first stage. The toxic fuel and fire killed around 100 top Soviet military and technical personnel.

In 1967, both nations faced serious challenges that brought their programs to a halt. Both nations had been rushing at full speed on the Apollo and Soyuz programs, without paying due dilligence to growing design and manufacturing problems. The results proved fatal to both pioneering crews.

In the US, the first Apollo mission crew, Command Pilot "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger Chaffee, were killed by suffocation in a cabin fire that swept through their Apollo 1 spacecraft during a ground test on 27 January 1967. The fire was probably caused by an electical spark, and grew out of control, fed by the spacecraft's pure oxygen atmosphere that was greater than normal atmospheric pressure.^[25] An investigative board detailed design and construction flaws in the spacecraft, and procedural failings including the failure to appreciate the hazard of the pure-oxygen atmosphere, and inadequate safety procedures.^[25] All these flaws had to be corrected over the next twenty-two months until the first piloted flight could be made.^[25] Mercury and Gemini veteran Gus Grissom had been a favored choice of Deke Slayton, the grounded Mercury astronaut who became NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations, to make the first piloted landing.

In 1980 it was disclosed that the USSR had covered up the March 23, 1961 death of Soviet cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko from massive third-degree burns in a fire in a high-oxygen isolation test chamber. This revelation subsequently caused some speculation as to whether the Apollo 1 disaster might have been averted had NASA been aware of the incident. Bondarenko was an early Vostok cosmonaut once slated in lieu of Gagarin to make the first piloted flight. The Soviet government literally erased all traces of Bondarenko's existence in the cosmonaut corps upon his death.^[26]

Meanwhile, the Soviets were having their own problems with Soyuz development. Engineers are said to have reported 200 design faults to party leaders, but their concerns "were overruled by political pressures for a series of space feats to mark the anniversary of Lenin's birthday." On April 24, 1967, the USSR suffered the death of its first cosmonaut, Colonel Vladimir Komarov, the single pilot of Soyuz 1. This was planned to be a three-day mission to include the first Soviet docking with an unpiloted Soyuz 2, but his mission was plagued with problems. Immediately, his craft was short of electrical power because only one of two solar panels had deployed. Then the automatic attitude control system began malfunctioning and eventually failed completely, resulting in the craft spinning wildly. Komarov was able to stop the spin with the manual system, which was only partially effective. The flight controllers immediately aborted his mission after only one day and he made an emergency re-entry.

Then a fault in the landing parachute system caused the primary chutes to fail, and the reserve chutes tangled together, causing Komarov to be killed on impact.

Fixing these and other spacecraft faults caused an eighteen-month delay before piloted Soyuz flights could resume, similar to the US experience with Apollo. This, combined with Korolyov's death, lead to the quick unraveling of the Soviet Moon landing program. Komarov had been Korolyov's first choice for a landing; now, Gagarin and Aleksei Leonov became the most likely candidates.^{[citation needed]}

Other astronauts died while training for space flight, including four Americans (Ted Freeman, Elliot See, Charlie Bassett, Clifton Williams) all died in crashes of T-38 aircraft. Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, met a similar death when he crashed in a MiG-15 'Fagot' while training for a Soyuz mission, in 1968. When the US Apollo 15 left the moon, the astronauts left behind a memorial in honor of all the people who had perished during the efforts to reach the moon from both the Soviet Union and the United States. This included the Apollo 1 and Soyuz 1 crews, and astronauts and cosmonauts killed while in training. In 1971, Soyuz 11 cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolski, Viktor Patsayev, and Vladislav Volkov asphyxiated during reentry. Since 1971, the Soviet/Russian space program has suffered no further losses.

Race to the Moon continues

The US kept on track in 1967 and 1968, fixing the fatal flaws in an improved version of the command ship, and proceeding with unpiloted test launches of the Saturn V launch vehicle and Lunar Module lander. Grissom's mission of shaking down the first piloted Apollo command ship was completed by his backup crew commanded by Schirra on Apollo 7, launched on October 11, 1968.

The USSR also fixed the parachute and control problems with Soyuz, and the next piloted mission Soyuz 3 was launched on October 26, 1968. The goal was to complete Komarov's mission of rendezvous and docking with the unpiloted Soyuz 2. Ground controllers brought the two craft to within 200 metres (660 ft) of each other, then cosmonaut Georgi Beregovoi took over control. He got within 1 metre (3.3 ft) of his target, but was unable to dock before expending his maneuvering fuel.

The Soviet Zond spacecraft was almost ready for piloted Moon-flyby missions in 1968, although testing was not yet complete. After a successful flight around the Moon, Zond 4 crashed on March 7, 1968 during its return to Earth. Official announcements say that this Zond 4 was an unpiloted automatic test flight which ended with its intentional destruction because its recovery trajectory positioned it over the Atlantic Ocean instead of over the USSR. After the declassifying of Soviet piloted moon program files in 1989, it was officially reported also that Gagarin really was present at the Baykonur cosmodrome on March 2, 1968 with Valery Bykovsky to observe a launch, not to take part in flight. At the time, the L1/Zond spacecraft was not yet ready for piloted missions after 5 unsuccessful and partially successful unpiloted test launches: Cosmos 146 on March 10, 1967, Cosmos 154 on April 8, 1967, undesignated Zond 1967A September 27, 1967, undesignated Zond 1967B on November 22, 1967.^{[citation needed]}

The Apollo program then hit another snag: the first human-rated Lunar Module was not ready in time for a December 1968 launch of the first of two piloted orbital test missions. NASA planners overcame this and put the US in the lead, by cancelling the second piloted test, delaying the first LM flight to early 1969, and sending Apollo 8 to lunar orbit without the LM in December. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders became the first men to orbit the Moon on December 24 and safely splashed down on December 27.

This mission was in part motivated by intelligence rumors the Soviets might fly the piloted cislunar Zond flight in late 1968. In September 1968, Zond 5 had made a cislunar flight and returned to Earth with animals (tortoises) on board. In November 1968 during the flight of Zond 6, US intelligence intercepted conversations among Pavel Popovich and Vitali Sevastyanov and a control center, leading to speculation that the piloted flyby had occurred. It was soon clear, however, that these were test transmissions between two ground control centers, with the Zond 6 intercepting and relaying the transmissions.^{[citation needed]}

However, it turned out there was no chance of the piloted cislunar flight happening. With the successive launch failures of the N1 in 1969, Soviet plans for a piloted landing suffered first delay and ultimately cancellation. A significant setback was the launch pad explosion of the N-1 on July 3, 1969. The rocket hit the pad after an engine shutdown, destroying itself and the launch facility.

A mounted slowscan TV camera shows Neil Armstrong as he climbs down the ladder to surface.

	Neil Armstrong's comment upon stepping onto the moon File:Neil Armstrong small step.wav "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

While unpiloted Soviet probes had reached the Moon before any U.S. craft, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the lunar surface on July 21, 1969, after landing the previous day. Commander of the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong was accompanied by Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin in an event watched by over 500 million people around the world. The lunar landing is widely recognized as one of the defining moments of the 20th century, as are Armstrong's words on first touching the Moon's surface:

That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.

The Apollo program followed the first landing with six more attempts through 1972, five of which were successful. A serious command ship failure on Apollo 13 in April 1970 aborted the landing and placed the crew's lives in jeopardy, but they were able to use the LM as a "lifeboat" and returned to Earth safely.

The US moon program was not motivated by the desire for territorial expansion. The Outer Space Treaty signed by the US, USSR and United Kingdom effective October 10, 1967, expressly forbids territorial claims on any celestial body, nor was it the United States' intention to claim ownership of any part of the Moon. The plaque left on the moon by the Apollo 11 expedition declared, "We came in peace for all mankind."

Earth orbital space stations

The USSR Salyut 1 as seen from one of the two visiting Soyuz spacecraft. The US Skylab space station.

Having lost the race to the Moon, the USSR decided to concentrate on orbital space stations. They launched six more Soyuz flights after Soyuz 3 in 1969 and 1970, then launched the first space station, the Salyut 1 laboratory designed by Kerim Kerimov,^[16][27] on April 19, 1971. On April 23, the crew of Soyuz 10 attempted to dock with it, but failed to achieve a secure enough connection to safely enter the station. The Soyuz 11 crew of Vladislav Volkov, Georgi Dobrovolski and Viktor Patsayev successfully docked on June 7 and completed a record 22-day stay on June 29. Unfortunately, the crew became the second in-flight space fatalaties during their re-entry the next day, when they were asphyxiated due to the opening of a faulty cabin pressure valve.

Salyut 1's orbit was increased to prevent premature re-entry, but further piloted flights were delayed while the Soyuz was redesigned to fix the new safety problem. The station re-entered on October 11, after 175 days in orbit. The USSR attempted to launch a second Salyut-class station designated DOS (Durable Orbital Station)-2 on July 29, 1972, but a rocket failure caused it to fail to achieve orbit.

The US also had plans to fly a piloted space laboratory as part of the Apollo Applications Program, using Apollo hardware. These originally called for its construction in orbit from a spent Saturn S-IVB rocket stage (used to launch the Apollo craft into earth orbit), but was ultimately pre-fabricated on Earth and launched by the first two stages of the Saturn V lunar launch vehicle. Named Skylab, it launched on May 14, 1973 after completion of the Apollo lunar program. It weighed 169,950 pounds (77,090 kg), was 58 feet (18 m) long by 21.7 feet (6.6 m) in diameter, with a habitable volume of 10,000 cubic feet (280 m³).

Skylab suffered a partial failure when its micrometeoroid shield and solar panels erroneously deployed during launch, and high aerodynamic forces ripped off the shield and one of the two solar panels. The shield was also designed to provide thermal protection from sunlight, and the internal temperature rose to dangerous levels. The remaining solar panel did not fully deploy and was not producing power. The launch of the first crew was delayed while a plan was devised to try to salvage the station by freeing the panel and deploying a substitute heat shield.

Charles Conrad, Jr., Paul J. Weitz and Dr. Joseph P. Kerwin, MD were launched aboard Skylab 1 on May 25, successfully accomplished these repairs by EVA and completed a 28-day stay, a new space endurance record. This was successively broken by Skylab 2 (59 days) on September 25, 1973 and Skylab 3 (84 days) on February 8, 1974. Skylab stayed in orbit another five years before re-entering on July 11, 1979.

After the DOS-2 failure, the USSR attempted to launch four more Salyut-class stations through 1975, with another failure due to an explosion of the final rocket stage, which punctured the station with shrapnel so that it wouldn't hold pressure. While all of the Salyuts were presented to the public as non-military scientific laboratories, some of them were actually covers for military reconnaissance stations.

The Soviets didn't break the US endurance record of 84 days until March 16, 1978, when a Soyuz crew stayed aboard Salyut 6 for 96 days.

Military applications

Throughout the Space Race, both nations also developed military space programs in secret, starting with reconnaissance satellites well before the launch of Sputnik 1. The first Soviet photoimaging satellite was the Zenit spy satellite, which Korolyov designed for dual-use and became the Vostok. The US with its Discoverer series, code-named Corona. Discoverer 13 became the first payload recovered from space in August 1960, one day ahead of the first Soviet recovered payload.^{[citation needed]}

Both nations developed major military space programs. In general, the United States took most of these programs only through the design phase, while the Soviet Union built, or even flew, theirs.

1. Supersonic Intercontinental Cruise Missile: Navaho (test program stopped) vs. Buran cruise missile (plan)
2. Small Winged Spacecraft: X-20 Dyna-Soar (mockup) vs. MiG-105 (flight-tested)
3. Satellite Inspection Capsule: Blue Gemini (mockup) vs. Soyuz interceptor (plan)
4. Military Capsule with hatch in heat shield: Gemini B (tested crewless in space) vs. VA TKS, also known as Merkur space capsule (flown crewless as part of TKS)
5. Ferry to Military Space Station: Gemini Ferry (plan) vs. TKS (flown crewless in space, and docked with a Salyut)

The most sophisticated of these human spaceflight programs were military space stations. The USAF developed plans for a Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), which was publicly announced on December 10, 1963. This was to use a modified version of the Gemini capsule as the crew launch and return vehicle, with a hatch cut through the heat shield to provide the astronauts intra-vehicular access to the laboratory. The Air Force chose its own astronaut corps, and flight-tested the heat shield hatch by reusing a Gemini capsule which had flown on the unpiloted Gemini 2 mission. The program proceeded with plans for a first flight in December 1969, but in July of that year President Richard M. Nixon, after being briefed on the capabilities of unpiloted satellites versus the MOL, decided to direct his Secretary of Defense to cancel MOL, since piloted space reconnaissance wasted resources to keep a crew to maintain the station between picture-taking, while unpiloted satellites could do the same job much more cost-effectively. Those disappointed USAF astronaut candidates willing to remain astronauts were accepted by NASA into its civilian corps.

The Soviets went as far as developing and flying several piloted military reconnaissance stations which they code-named Almaz which they kept secret from the world by masquerading them as the non-military Salyut 2, 3, and 5 stations. These flew from 1973 to 1977, and actually carried a 23mm rapid-fire cannon to defend against imagined US attack.^[28] In 1978, the Soviet Ministry of Defence finally reached the same conclusion as the US and canceled the piloted Almaz program, converting it to a heavy unpiloted reconnaissance satellite.

Robotic planetary probes

Venus

Main article: Venera

The Soviet Union first attempted to launch a probe named Venera to fly by the planet Venus on February 4, 1961. The craft successfully reached an Earth parking orbit, but the departure stage failed to ignite to send the craft to Venus. The government concealed the failure, identifying the launch as Sputnik 7. They tried again on February 12, and this time Venera 1 successfully escaped Earth orbit on a trajectory taking it near Venus, but on February 26 communications were lost so no data from Venus could be received. The probe passed within 100,000 kilometres (62,000 mi) of Venus on May 19 and 20, remaining in a heliocentric orbit.

The Soviets tried to launch three more Venera probes in August and September 1962, but all failed at launch.

Venus, the first planet flown past by a spacecraft in December 14, 1962, as photographed by Mariner 10 in 1974. Main article: Mariner program

The United States launched its first Venus flyby attempt, Mariner 1 on July 22, 1962, but its rocket veered off course and was intentionally destroyed approximately 5 minutes after liftoff. Mariner 2 was successfully launched on August 27, 1962, and passed within 22,000 miles (35,000 km) of Venus on December 14. It sent back the first sensor data from Venus, revealing a high surface temperature, but carried no cameras since they would not be able to penetrate the planet's dense cloud cover.

The Soviets tried two more Venus probes in February and March 1964, but both failed at launch. They successfully launched Venera 2 (fly-by) and Venera 3 on November 12 and 16, 1965, but again these probes' communication systems failed, though Venera 3 made the first crash-landing as planned on March 1, 1966. These were followed by two more launch failures on November 23 and 26. They finally succeeded with Venera 4, launched on June 12, 1967, which crash-landed on Venus on October 18, collecting atmospheric data on entry.

The US launched Mariner 5 to Venus on June 14, 1967 for an October flyby. The next four Mariner probes were sent to Mars instead of Venus.

180-degree panorama taken by Venera 9 of the surface of Venus

The Soviet Union's Venera 7, launched in 1970, became the first craft to soft-land on Venus. Venera 9, launched in 1975, transmitted the first pictures from the surface of another planet.

The United States completed its Mariner program with Mariner 10, launched in November 1973 for a flyby with Venus on February 5, 1974, and two flybys of Mercury on March 29 and September 21 the same year. It was the first, and as of 28 July 2010 T 14:35 UTC., the only spacecraft to fly by Mercury.

Mars

Main article: Mars probe program The sharpest of the first close-up image of Mars taken by Mariner 4, clearly showing craters.

The Soviet Union first attempted to send two Marsnik probes to Mars in 1960; both failed at launch. They tried again with a Mars 1 probe in 1962, but this failed en route to Mars. These were followed by Mars 1962A and Mars 1962B, both of which failed to leave Earth orbit.

They tried again in 1964, with two more failures, Zond 1964A and Zond 2. That same year, the US launched Mariner 3 and Mariner 4 on November 5 and 28, respectively. Mariner 3's nose cone failed to jettison, causing it to fail to reach Mars, but Mariner 4 achieved the first successful Mars flyby on July 14-15, 1965. It passed within 6,120 miles (9,850 km) and transmitted pictures back to Earth.

In 1969, the Soviets made two more failed attempts, Zond 1964A and Zond 2. The US launched Mariner 6 on February 24, and Mariner 7 on March 21. These were both successful, achieving 2,130-mile (3,430 km) approaches on July 31 and August 5, respectively.

Meander in Scamander Vallis, as seen by Mariner 9.

In 1971, Mars achieved its closest approach to Earth since 1956. Both nations took advantage of this by attempting to send larger, more complex probes capable of orbiting the planet. The Soviet design consisted of an orbital "bus" vehicle which carried a lander intended to set a robotic rover on the surface. The USSR launched Mars 1971C on May 5, intended to beat the US Mariner 8 launched May 9 and Mariner 9 launched May 30. A control timer error kept Mars 1971C from leaving its Earth parking orbit, and Mariner 8's launch vehicle failed.

The USSR tried again with Mars 2 launched May 19 and Mars 3 launched May 28. These did not overtake Mariner 9, which achieved the first Martian orbit on November 13, with a periapsis of 930 miles (1,500 km) and sent back the first detailed pictures of the planet. Mars 2 successfully achieved orbit on November 27, but the lander crashed on the surface. Mars 3 was a limited success: it achieved orbit on December 2, but another control error did not send it into a low enough orbit. The lander achieved the first successful soft landing on December 2, but its communications were lost after 15 seconds.

The US tried no more Mars probes through 1975, but the Soviets launched four more Mars series probes in July and August of 1973, with mixed results. The first two were orbiters: Mars 4 failed to brake for orbit and flew by the planet, while Mars 5 achieved orbit but failed after 22 orbits (about 23 days). Mars 6 successfully landed, but only transmitted data for 224 seconds. The Mars 7 lander separated prematurely and missed the planet by 1,300 kilometres (810 mi).

Commercial applications

Communications satellites

The first communications satellite, the American Project SCORE, was launched on 18 December 1958, and relayed a Christmas message from President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the world. Other notable examples of satellite communication during (or spawned by) the Space Race include:

1960: Echo 1A: first passive communications satellite (US)

1960: Courier 1B: first active repeater satellite (US)

1962: Telstar: first transatlantic and first television transmissions (US)

1963: Syncom 2: first geosynchronous communications satellite (Clarke orbit) (US)

1972: Anik 1: first domestic communications satellite (Canada)

1976: Marisat: first mobile communications satellite (US)

The United States launched the first geosynchronous satellite, Syncom-2, on 26 July 1963. The success of this class of satellite meant that a simple satellite dish no longer needed to track the orbit of the satellite because that orbit remained geostationary. Henceforth ordinary citizens could use satellite-mediated communications transmissions for television broadcasts, after a one-time setup.

End of the Space Race

While the Sputnik 1 launch can clearly be called the start of the Space Race, its end is harder to pinpoint. In May of 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev negotiated an easing of relations known as detente, creating a temporary "thaw" in the Cold War. In the American spirit of good sportsmanship after winning the Moon race, and in light of the USSR's willingness to be a bit more open about their (non-military) space projects, the time seemed right for cooperation rather than competition, and the notion of a continuing "race" began to subside.

Soyuz-U booster used to launch the Russian ASTP crew. A Saturn IB launches the American ASTP crew into orbit.

The two nations planned a joint mission to dock the last US Apollo craft with a Soyuz, known as the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). To prepare, the US designed a docking module necessary for compatibility between Apollo's docking system with the docking system the Soviets used, which allowed any of their craft to dock with any other (e.g. Soyuz/Soyuz as well as Soyuz/Salyut). The module was also necessary as an airlock to allow the men to visit each other's craft with incompatible cabin atmospheres. The USSR used the Soyuz 16 mission in December 1974 to prepare for ASTP.

The joint mission began when Soyuz 19 was launched first on July 15, 1975 at 12:20 UTC, and the Apollo craft was launched with the docking module six and a half hours later. The two craft rendezvoused and first docked on July 17 at 16:19 UTC. The three astronauts conducted joint experiments with the two cosmonauts, and the crew shook hands, exchanged gifts and visits in each other's craft.

After the Space Race, the United States began developing a new generation of reusable orbital spacecraft known as the Space Shuttle, while the USSR continued to develop space station technology using their Soyuz vehicle as the shuttle.

Organization, funding, and economic impact

The huge expenditures and bureaucracy needed to organize successful space exploration led to the creation of national space agencies. The United States and the Soviet Union developed programs focused solely on the scientific and industrial requirements for these efforts.

On 29 July 1958, President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). When it began operations on 1 October 1958, NASA consisted mainly of the four laboratories and some 8,000 employees of the government's 46-year-old research agency for aeronautics, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). While its predecessor, NACA, operated on a US$5 million budget, the NASA budget rapidly accelerated to US$5 billion per year, including huge sums for subcontractors from the private sector. The Apollo 11 Moon landing, the high point of NASA's success, cost an estimated 20 to 25 billion dollars.

The amount spent by U.S. on the space race from 1957 - 1975 is estimated to be about $100 billion in 2004 inflation adjusted dollars. [1]

Lack of reliable statistics makes it difficult to compare U.S. and Soviet Union space spending, especially during the Khrushchev years. However in 1989, the Chief of Staff of the Soviet Armed Services, General M. Moiseyev, reported that the Soviet Union had allocated 6.9 billion rubles (about US$4 billion) to its space program that year.^[29] Other Soviet officials estimated that their total piloted space expenses totalled about that amount over the entire duration of the programs, with some lower unofficial estimates of about four and half billion rubles. In addition to ambiguity of the figures, such comparisons must also take into account the likely effect of Soviet propaganda, which pursued the goal of making the Soviet Union look strong and of confusing the Western analysis.

Organizational issues, particularly internal rivalries, also plagued the Soviet effort. The Soviet Union had nothing like NASA (the Russian Aviation and Space Agency originated only in the 1990s). Too many political issues in science and too many personal views handicapped Soviet progress. Every Soviet chief designer had to stand for his own ideas, looking for the patronage of a communist official. In 1964, between the various chief designers, the Soviet Union was developing 30 different programs of launcher and spacecraft design. Following the death of Korolyov, the Soviet space program became reactive, attempting to maintain parity with the United States. In 1974 the Soviet Union reorganized its space program, creating the Energia project to duplicate the U.S. Space Shuttle with Shuttle Buran.

The Soviets also operated in the face of an economic disadvantage. Although the Soviet economy was the second largest in the world; the U.S. economy was the largest. Some observers have argued that the high economic cost of the space race, along with the extremely expensive arms race, eventually deepened the economic crisis of the Soviet system during the late 1970s and 1980s and was one of the factors that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.^{[citation needed]}

Legacy

Advances in technology and education

Technology, especially in aerospace engineering and electronic communication, advanced greatly during this period. The effects of the Space Race however went far beyond rocketry, physics, and astronomy. "Space age technology" extended to fields as diverse as home economics and forest defoliation studies, and the push to win the race changed the very ways in which students learned science.

American concerns that they had fallen so quickly behind the Soviets in the race to space led quickly to a push by legislators and educators for greater emphasis on mathematics and on the physical sciences in American schools. The United States' National Defense Education Act of 1958 increased funding for these goals from childhood education through the post-graduate level. To this day over 1,200 American high schools retain their own planetarium installations, a situation unparalleled in any other country worldwide and a direct consequence of the Space Race.

The scientists fostered by these efforts helped develop for space exploration technologies which have seen adapted uses ranging from the kitchen to athletic fields. Dried fruits and ready-to-eat foods, in particular food sterilisation and package sealing techniques, stay-dry clothing, and even no-fog ski goggles have their roots in space science.

Today over a thousand artificial satellites orbit earth, relaying communications data around the planet and facilitating remote sensing of data on weather, vegetation, and human movements to nations who employ them. In addition, much of the micro-technology which fuels everyday activities from time-keeping to enjoying music derives from research initially driven by the Space Race.

Even with all the technological advances since the first Sputnik was launched, the former Soviet Union's R-7 Semyorka rocket, that marked the beginning the space race, is still in use today. It is servicing the International Space Station (ISS) as the launcher for both the Soyuz and Progress spacecrafts, and more notably in terms of the end of the Space Race, ferrying American astronauts to and from the station as well as Russian crews.

The Environmental Movement

An unintended effect was that it also was partially responsible for the birth of the environmental movement, as this was the first time in history that humans came to see their home-world as it really was – when the first color pictures from space showed a fragile blue planet bordered by the blackness of space.^[30] Pictures like Apollo 8's Earthrise, which showed a crescent Earth peeking over the lunar surface, and Apollo 17's The Blue Marble, which for the first-time-ever showed a full circular earth, became iconic to the environmental movement.^[30] The first Earth-Day, was partially triggered by the Apollo 8 photo.^[31] Astronaunts returning from space missions, also made comments about how fragile the Earth looked from space, further fuelling calls for better stewardship of the only home humans have: for now.^[32]

Notes

1. ^ Schefter (1999), pp. 13-14
2. ^ Gainor (2001), p. 68
3. ^ ^{a b} Schefter (1999), p. 29
4. ^ Siddiqi (2003a), p. 41
5. ^ Siddiqi (2003a), p. 24-41
6. ^ ^{a b} Gatland (1976), pp. 100-101
7. ^ Siddiqi (2003a), pp. 4, 11, 16
8. ^ ^{a b c} Schefter (1999), pp. 7-10
9. ^ ^{a b} Siddiqi (2003a), p. 45
10. ^ ^{a b c d} Wade, Mark. "Early Russian Ballistic Missiles". Encyclopedia Astronautix. http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/earsiles.htm. Retrieved 24 July 2010.
11. ^ ^{a b c d e} Wade, Mark. "Atlas". Encyclopedia Astronautix. http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/atlas.htm. Retrieved 24 July 2010.
12. ^ "Sputnik and The Dawn of the Space Age". NASA. http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/.
13. ^ Both Sides of the “Moon”, an October 12, 1957 leader from The Economist
14. ^ Dow, Peter. "Sputnik Revisited: Historical Perspectives on Science Reform". symposium hosted by the Center for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Education. http://www.nas.edu/sputnik/dow1.htm. Retrieved 2007-03-20.
15. ^ http://epizodsspace.testpilot.ru/bibl/gerd/gerd/text/19.htm (Russian)
16. ^ ^{a b} Peter Bond, Obituary: Lt-Gen Kerim Kerimov, The Independent, 7 April 2003
17. ^ Gatland (1976), pp. 153–154
18. ^ Gatland (1976), pp. 115–117
19. ^ Gatland (1976), pp. 117–118
20. ^ Kennedy to Johnson, "Memorandum for Vice President," April 20, 1961.
21. ^ Johnson to Kennedy, "Evaluation of Space Program," April 28, 1961.
22. ^ http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/Urgent+National+Needs+Page+4.htm
23. ^ Selverstone, Marc (2002-07/08). "JFK and the Space Race". White House Tapes–Presidential Recordings Program, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia. http://www.whitehousetapes.net/exhibit/jfk-and-space-race.
24. ^ "THE WORLD'S FIRST SPACE RENDEZVOUS". Apollo to the Moon; To Reach the Moon — Early Human Spaceflight. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/attm/rm.ey.g7.3.html. Retrieved 2007-09-17.
25. ^ ^{a b c} Seamans, Robert C., Jr. (1967-04-05). "Findings, Determinations And Recommendations". Report of Apollo 204 Review Board. NASA History Office. http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/Apollo204/find.html. Retrieved 2007-10-07.
26. ^ Oberg, James,Uncovering Soviet Disasters, Chapter 10: "Dead Cosmonauts", pp 156-176, Random House, New York, 1988, retrieved 8 January 2008
27. ^ Betty Blair (1995), "Behind Soviet Aeronauts", Azerbaijan International 3 (3).
28. ^ В. А. Поляченко, На Море и в Космос, МОРСАР АВ, 2008, page 133
29. ^ Oberg, James, in Final Frontier, as reprinted in The New Book of Popular Science Annual, 1992
30. ^ ^{a b} Poole (2008), p. 13
31. ^ Poole (2008), p. 152
32. ^ Poole (2008), p. 108

References

• Bilstein, Roger E. (1996). Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles. Washington: Scientific and Technical Information Branch, National Aeronautics and Space Administration,. ISBN 0160489091. http://books.google.com/books?id=RUIjAAAAMAAJ&dq=isbn%3A0813026911&source=gbs_slider_thumb.
• Brugess, Colin; Kate Doolan, Bert Vis (2003). Fallen Astronauts: Heroes Who Died Reaching for the Moon. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803262124. http://books.google.com/books?id=iJ8WwRBNgk0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=isbn:0803262124&ei=ZWlKTPOuEpmgzASKoaSvCQ&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false.
• Dallek, Robert (2003). An Finished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0316172383. http://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Life-John-Kennedy-1917-1963/dp/0316172383/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279943573&sr=1-1.
• Freni, Pamela (2002). Space for Women: A History of Women With the Right Stuff. Santa Ana, California: Seven Locks Press. ISBN 1931643121. http://books.google.com/books?id=uFTbAAAAMAAJ&dq=isbn:1931643121&ei=f4ZKTLq6NIKEyAT9nNXkCQ&cd=1.
• Gainor, Chris (2001). Arrows to the Moon: Avro's Engineers and the Space Race. Burlington, Ontario: Apogee Books. ISBN 1896522831. http://www.space.com/spacelibrary/books/library_gainor_020125.html.
• Gatland, Kenneth (1976). Manned Spacecraft, Second Revision. New York, NY, USA: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc. pp. 100–101. ISBN 0025428209.
• Hall, Rex; David J. Shayler (2003). Soyuz: A Universal Spacecraft. New York: Springer–Praxis Books. ISBN 1852336579. http://books.google.com/books?id=dbGchpi1HP8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=isbn:1852336579&ei=3IhKTPuvL5qIyATUhaWzCQ&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false.
• Harford, James J. (1997). Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon (1 ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0471148539.
• Harvey, Brian (2001). Russia in Space: The Failed Frontier?. New York: Springer–Praxis Books. ISBN 1852332034. http://books.google.com/books?id=DrgvjPsfwhsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=isbn:1852332034&ei=hHdKTOG_JpSszgTDobXOCQ&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false.
• Poole (2008). Earthrise : how man first saw the Earth. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University. ISBN 9780300137668. http://books.google.com/books?id=5qHuAAAAMAAJ&dq=isbn:9780300137668&ei=f5hKTPnGNJu8yATBgdWvCQ&cd=1.
• Schefter, James (1999). The Race: The uncensored story of how America beat Russia to the Moon. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0385492537. http://books.google.com/books?id=Y7m6edRkG2EC&dq=isbn%3A0385492537&source=gbs_book_other_versions.
• Seamans, Robert C., Jr. (1967-04-05). "Findings, Determinations And Recommendations". Report of Apollo 204 Review Board. NASA History Office. http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/Apollo204/find.html. Retrieved 2007-10-07.
• Siddiqi, Asif A. (2003a). Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge. Gainsville: University Press of Florida. ISBN 081302627X.
• Siddiqi, Asif A. (2003b). The Soviet Space Race with Apollo. Gainsville: University Press of Florida. ISBN 0813026288.
• Thompson, Neal (2004). Light This Candle : The Life & Times of Alan Shepard—America's First Spaceman. New York: Crown Publishers. ISBN 0609610015. http://books.google.com/books?id=7JJTAAAAMAAJ&dq=isbn:0609610015&ei=8WtKTPKXNamkygSDvK3CCQ&cd=1.
• Wolfe, Tom (1979/2001). The Right Stuff. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-613-91667-0. http://www.amazon.com/Right-Stuff-Tom-Wolfe/dp/0553381350/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279947960&sr=1-1.
• Yeager, Chuck; Leo Janos (1985). Yeager: An Autobiography. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0553050931.

See also

• Asia's Space Race
• List of spacecraft manufacturers
• Moon Shot
• List of space exploration milestones, 1957-1969
• List of communications satellite firsts
• Spaceflight records
• US space surveillance network tracks objects in space
• Timeline of space exploration
• Timeline of Solar System exploration
• Woods Hole Conference

External links

Listen to this article (2 parts) · (info) Part 1 • Part 2 This audio file was created from a revision of Space Race dated 2005-07-02, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help) More spoken articles

• Scanned letter from Wernher Von Braun to Vice President Johnson
• "America's Space Program: Exploring a New Frontier", a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan
• Why Did the USSR Lose the Moon Race? from Pravda, 2002-12-03
• Space Race Exhibition at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
• TheSpaceRace.com – Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs
• Timeline of the Space Race to the Moon 1960 - 1969
• Shadows of the Soviet Space Age, Paul Lucas
• Chronology:Moon Race at russianspaceweb.com
• Artwork representing the cold war in space

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