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The first satellite to be launched, Sputnik, was fired into orbit in October 1957 by the Soviet Union. Many people don’t know that it was a response to the International Geophysical Year, a science program where the US, the Soviet union, and several other countries gathered together to study the earth. Sputnik sent a purposeless signal back to earth, and was occasionally visible to the naked eye, but served no other purpose.
However, it scared many Americans to know there was an enemy satellite in the sky, and alerted others to the fact that the Soviet Union now had rockets powerful enough to launch atomic bombs. For a history of rocket development and events leading to the Cold War, click here. President Eisenhower responded to Sputnik by authorizing the creation of NASA.
As stated above, NASA was authorized by Eisenhower (for more information, click here), as something to try and catch up with the Soviet Union. The United States felt unprepared when Sputnik was launched and didn’t want to lose the Space Race with the Soviet Union. It was created on October 1, 1958, and took over several national laboratories and space centers. NASA’s size grew rapidly, and more and more science and math classes were taught in schools. Some groundbreaking acts executed by NASA are the Apollo 11 mission, where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first two people to walk on the moon, and various instances of sending unmanned crafts to explore and photograph other planets. (To visit NASA's official site, click here).)
Although the United States and the Soviet Union were the bitterest of enemies during the Cold War and the Space Race, in 1998 they managed to work together on a very important project: the International Space Station. The Soviet Union and the United States led the project, while several other countries helped and worked with them. The purpose of the International Space Station was to provide scientists with opportunities to learn more about space and the earth, and to enable scientists to look more closely at medicines and life on earth - in space. The ISS consists of over 100 parts that astronauts had to put together in space. It represents a kind of end to the Space Race and stands as a mark of cooperation between the US and the Soviet Union. (For information on how the International Space Station works, click here).