The world’s first satellite that the soviets launched in 1957,and sparked the space race was called

The space race was a series of competitive technology demonstrations between the United States and the Soviet Union, aiming to show superiority in spaceflight. It was an outgrowth of the mid-20th-century Cold War, a tense global conflict that pitted the ideologies of capitalism and communism against one another, according to an online exhibit from the National Air and Space Museum. 

The opening salvo of the space race was the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 on Oct. 4, 1957. The U.S. government had already been planning to launch its own artificial satellite, and members of the public were shocked when they saw that the Soviet Union, which had been devastated during World War II, was able to achieve this milestone first, NASA wrote on the 60th anniversary of the launch.

The Soviets followed up with another triumph less than a month later with the launch of Sputnik 2, which carried a dog named Laika. It wasn't until the next year, 1958, that the Americans had their first achievement in the space race, launching a satellite called Explorer 1. That same year, NASA was founded and publicly announced the creation of a program to send human passengers into space.

Still, for much of the first half of the space race, the Soviet Union was considered to be ahead. Its engineers accomplished many firsts, including the first mission to leave Earth orbit, Luna 1; the first probe to reach the moon, Luna 2; and the first spacecraft to head toward Venus, Venera, which stopped responding a week after its launch. 

On April 12, 1961, the Soviets obtained another spectacular victory with the successful flight of Yuri Gagarin, the first person to fly in space. After returning to Earth, Gagarin was celebrated as an international hero. Gagarin beat the first American, Alan Shepard, into space by less than a month. Shepard's flight took place on May 5, 1961. 

A major turning point in the space race occurred that same month, when U.S. President John F. Kennedy stood before legislators in Congress and announced that he had committed NASA to landing people on the moon before the end of the decade. A few months later, at Rice University in Texas, Kennedy delivered his famous "Moon Speech," where he said, "We choose to go to the moon … in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Who won the space race?

Over the next few years, each side in the space race took several other firsts. The Americans achieved the first interplanetary flyby when Mariner 2 sped past Venus in 1962, followed by the first Mars flyby in 1965 with Mariner 4. The Soviets sent the first woman into space, Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963 (a feat that would take the U.S. 20 more years to achieve). Other nations launched their own rockets and satellites, including Canada in 1962, France in 1965, and Japan and China in 1970. 

But these countries' successes were mere sideshows in what came to be the main event of the space race: NASA's Apollo program. Following the achievements of the crewed Mercury and Gemini programs, NASA engineers embarked on a series of missions to place human footprints on the moon. 

The program got off to a horrific start on Jan. 27, 1967, when all three astronauts in the Apollo 1 capsule were killed during a launch rehearsal test that sparked a huge fire. But that catastrophic failure generated extensive redesigns of the spacecraft and a commitment to ensuring that the crew did not die in vain. 

Just over a year later, on Oct. 11, 1968, NASA launched its first Apollo astronauts into space aboard a Saturn I rocket for the 11-day Apollo 7 mission. This was followed two months later by Apollo 8, which sent a crew around the moon and back to Earth. Meanwhile, the Soviets were continuing to build up their spaceflight capabilities, but by the time of Apollo 8, repeated disasters had caused their moon program to lose momentum. 

In 1969, NASA launched Apollo 9, which conducted critical tests of its lunar module in Earth orbit; and Apollo 10, which all but landed on the moon, bringing its crew within a few miles of the lunar surface. Then, on July 20, 1969, the space race reached its peak when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon and walked on its surface during the Apollo 11 mission. 

Though there were additional American and Soviet missions, after the successes of the Apollo program, the space race was widely believed to have been won by the U.S. Eventually, as the Cold War wound down, both sides agreed to cooperate in space and construct the International Space Station beginning in 1998. 

Is there a current space race? 

Some observers, including U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, have declared that America is now in a new space race with up-and-coming global superpowers like China and India, as well as old rivals like Russia. But most space policy experts who have spoken to Space.com don't think that Pence's arguments hold much water.

"The Russians don't have a stated public interest in going to the moon with human spaceflight," Wendy Whitman Cobb, a political scientist at Cameron University in Oklahoma, told Space.com. "[The Chinese] have taken a purposefully slow, methodical approach to spaceflight and for them, I think the motivations are more in the military and national-prestige realms."

The world is much more complex today than it was during the Cold War, when two major superpowers vied for dominance. Now, private companies, such as Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, have joined in a new contest to show off their spaceflight capabilities, according to the BBC. While there are some competitive aspects, such as the potential for fights over limited lunar resources, tomorrow's space races will involve a greater number of actors and more muddled win-lose scenarios than before. 

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Translations of Russian documents

"Announcement of the First Satellite," from Pravda, October 5, 1957

A Report On An Artificial Earth Satellite

A Report On the Feasibility of Development of an Artificial Earth Satellite

Synopsis of Report on Development of Conceptual Design of an Artificial Earth Satellite

Proposals of First Launches of Artificial Earth Satellites

Preliminary Considerations Of Prospective Work On The Development Of Outer Space 

These were carried aboard a Second World War V2 rocket on 20 February 1947. Find out more about the first animals in space

Dogs were sent into space

While the US often sent primates on test flights, the Soviet Union preferred to use dogs. They were seen to be more obedient, and Moscow stray dogs were reckoned to be more equipped to deal with the extreme conditions and potential hunger of space travel. 

There is a solar powered satellite

The US Navy's Vanguard 1 was the first solar-powered satellite. Launched on 17 March 1958, it remains the oldest human-made probe in orbit. Although communication with the satellite is now lost, it will stay in space for many years to come.  

Yuri Gargarin started a tradition

On the 12 April 1961, the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin asked the bus driver to stop on the route to the launchpad and urinated against the right-hand back tyre of the bus. This act has become a tradition for all astronauts travelling into space. Female astronauts bring vials of their urine to splash on the wheel.

Astronauts were nearly cosmonauts

In the 1950s an ongoing discussion began at NASA between astronauts and cosmonauts. The deputy administrator wanted to name US travellers in space as cosmonauts, the term applied to Russian spacemen. He felt that "cosmos" was more applicable to space travel than just the term used to stars (or "Astro"). However, while he made a clear point, he was outvoted by his peers.  

Alan Shepard played golf on the Moon

On 2 February 1971,  Alan Shepard became the first human to play golf on the Moon. After smuggling a makeshift golf club aboard his Apollo 14 lunar mission, Shepard hit two balls just before liftoff. Find out about what's been left on the Moon

The Mercury Seven were the oldest

The Mercury Seven were the group of seven astronauts that piloted all the crewed spaceflights of the Mercury programme, occurring from May 1961 to May 1963. Of the Mercury Seven, John Glenn went on to become a US senator and on 29 October 1998 (while still a senator), he became the oldest person to fly in space at the age of 77.

Apollo 12 was struck by lightning 

On 14 November 1969, Apollo 12 was sent on its lunar mission. The launch was the most distressing of the Apollo programme, as a series of lightning strikes just after liftoff temporarily disabled their power and guidance systems. On stepping onto the lunar surface five days later, Conrad joked, "Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me."

The last person to walk on the Moon was Eugene Cernan 

Cernan was the Mission Commander of the Apollo 17 mission that occurred between 11 and 14 December 11 1972. Only twelve people (all US astronauts) had done so before, and none have done so since.  He walked on the Moon with geologist and astronaut, Harrison Schmitt. 

Who won the Space Race?

With no official measure of success, the winner of the Space Race is a point of controversy. Most historians agree that the space race ended on 20 July 1969 when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon for the first time. As the climax of space history and exploration, the lunar landing led to a triumph for the US.

While the US set a man on the Moon first, their success was fed by a series of pioneering achievements by the Soviet Union. The Space Race can be seen as a climactic comeback for the United States starting in 1968, rather than a decisive victory. 

Following the Moon landing, the Soviet Union concentrated their efforts on building a space station. On 7 June 1971, the Soyuz 11 spacecraft successfully docked with the Salyut 1 space laboratory and completed a record 22-day stay - demonstrating that space exploration would continue. 

Furthermore, in May 1972, the US and the Soviet Union negotiated an easing of hostile relations. This "thaw" in the cold war led to cooperation between the two nations on future missions, and the Space Race became a joint venture. 

The Space Race and the Cold War

Following the Second World War in 1946, tensions rose between two of the victors; the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US) The primary source of conflict arose from the struggle between two political beliefs of communism (USSR) and capitalism (US). This conflict became known as the Cold War. 

The term cold in this context meant that there was no direct fighting between the two sides, but each sponsored and supported many conflicts across the world. The Cold War lasted until 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

The Space Race played a significant part in the Cold War as the Americans and Soviets competed to prove their technological and intellectual superiority by becoming the first nation to put a human into space. From beginning to end, the world's attention was captivated by this contest for dominance.  

How did the Space Race affect the world?

The Space Race has had a broader impact on society than just space exploration; here are some of the ways the world has changed. 

Communication

The Earth is now surrounded by a network of satellites, which provide broadband communications and high-definition television, data used for weather reporting and GPS navigation and positioning. Many of these tools and systems were created and developed during the Space Race. 

Medical

The image processing used in CAT scans and radiography were both initially developed for deep space imaging and photography. NASA's innovations into shock absorbent materials also helped create more functionally dynamic artificial limbs. 

Technology

The world's first portable computer and mouse were created for space exploration and adapted for the commercial markets. Even the wireless headsets we use today originate from NASA creating hands-free equipment for astronauts and pilots. One of the classic examples is NASA's creation of the ball-point pen for writing in space. However, the Soviet Union found a cost-effective method of using a pencil.

President Kennedy Space Race speech 

On 12 September 1962, President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech to a large crowd gathered at the Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas. The speech called for an ambitious space exploration programme that included not just missions to put astronauts on the Moon, but various other space projects such as communications and weather satellites. The quotation "We choose to go to the Moon" is remembered as the tagline from the speech. The US would succeed in this mission eight years later, but Kennedy would not be around to see it. He was assassinated two years later in Dallas, Texas on 22 November 1963. 

What even started the Space Race?

Following the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed to see who had the best technology in space. This included events such as the first satellite to orbit Earth, the first human-crewed spacecraft and the first person to walk on the Moon. The Space Race was considered vital by the two nations as it showed the world which country had the superior scientific, economic and political systems.