Although the successful launch of Explorer 1 on Jan. In late 1957, America's first attempt at a satellite, the Vanguard TV-3, almost immediately crashed back onto the launchpad, according to The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (opens in new tab). But the American public saw it differently, right because they saw it as this larger cold war competition.'įollowing the launch of Sputnik, it was deemed appropriate that a private organization should be founded in order to best facilitate the burgeoning American Space Program, according to (opens in new tab) NASA. 'He sees it as just what it was, the Soviet Union launching a transceiver transmitter into orbit. 'When Sputnik launches, President Eisenhower doesn't see it as an existential threat,' according to Brian C Odom, acting Chief Historian for NASA.

In the United States, the response to the news that the Soviet Union had sent an object into outer space, caused public panic. A month later they followed this with the launch of Sputnik 2, which carried a dog named Laika, making the Soviets the first to send a living creature into outer space, according to the Royal Museums Greenwich (opens in new tab). 4, 1957, the Soviet Union announced that they had successfully launched a satellite, Sputnik. The United States first began planning this venture in 1954, according to a NASA article (opens in new tab). The first aim of this 'space race' was the launching of an unmanned object, a satellite, which could successfully orbit Earth. Another area of conflict was the battle to 'conquer' the exploration of space first. The Cold War had many battlefields, from the United States' intervention in Vietnam to the nuclear arms race. A technician working on the Soviet satellite, the first manmade object to orbit the earth (Image credit: Getty: Sovfoto / Contributor) (opens in new tab)įollowing the end of the Second World War, a bitter ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union known as the Cold War (opens in new tab), began.

The space between worlds summary