SPACE RACE IN THE 1950S AND 1960S By Brianna Johnson
Transcript
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By Brianna Johnson
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They Beat Us In October, 1957, the Soviet Union started the
Space Race when they launched the first satellite named Sputnik to
be hurled into orbit around the Earth.
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Sputnik Sputnik was actually no larger than a beach ball and
sent meaningless signals back to earth, but it had a profound
effect on the thinking of citizens and governments around the
globe. It was a shiny steel sphere about 23 inches across with four
antennas trailing behind it. Russian engineers wanted to make sure
that people around the globe could both see and hear it. Sputnik
was polished so it would reflect light that could be seen with the
naked eye even from 175 miles up in the sky. And it broadcast a
"beep- beep" pattern of signals that could be picked up by amateur
radio operators around the world.
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Our Reaction The reaction of the U.S and around the world was
astonishment and somewhat fear. All of a sudden, there was an
"enemy satellite" streaking across the sky over the U.S. At the
time, no one knew what it was capable of doing. What U.S political
leaders did know was that if the Soviet Union had rockets powerful
enough to launch a satellite, they had rockets powerful enough to
launch atomic bombs on the U.S. This was a scary thought.
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Headlines Were Going Crazy! We were Surprised and mad at the
same time !
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We Tried And Failed. The "space race" between the Soviet Union
and the United States was on. But our first attempts at catching up
ended in spectacular explosions. We tried to create our own version
of Sputnik called Vanguard TV3, but we failed miserably. This
satellite was a disaster, so it was nicknamed Flopnik.
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Explorer 1 Later on came the first successful U.S satellite
named Explorer 1 in 1958. Both Sputnik and Explorer 1 were launched
as part of each countrys contributions to the International
Geophysical year.
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Contributions Sputnik helped to determine the density of the
upper atmosphere and Explorer 1 flight data led to the discovery by
James Van Allen of the Van Allen Radiation Belt.
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Animals In Space Dogs launched by the U.S on captured German
V-2 rockets in 1946 became the first animals sent into space for
scientific study. This was before the creation of Sputnik and the
beginning of the Space Race.
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Poor Laika The first living creature sent into orbit was a dog
named Laika. She traveled in the U.S.S.Rs Sputnik 2 in 1957. While
no technology existed at the time to recover Laika after her
flight, she died of stress and overheating soon after reaching
space.
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Other Animals In 1960, Russian space dogs Belka and Strelka
orbited the Earth and successfully returned. NASA imported
Chimpanzees from Africa, and sent at least two into space before
launching their first human orbiter. Soviet- launched turtles on
the rocket Zond 5 became the first animals to fly around the
moon.
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First Humans in Space A Soviet cosmonaut (FYI: a Russian
astronaut) named Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space when
he entered orbit in Russias Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961.
Twenty-three days later on mission Freedom 7, Alan Shepard first
entered sub-orbital space for the U.S. John Glenn became the first
American to successfully orbit Earth, completing 3 orbits on
Feb.20, 1962.
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Soviet Still On Top A Soviet Valentina Tereshokva, became the
first woman in space on June 16, 1963 in the Vostok 6. Aleksel
Leonov from Vokshod 2, launched by the USSR on March 18, 1965
carried out the first spacewalk. Unfortunately this mission ended
early in a disaster. Leonov almost failed to return to the capsule
and due to a poor retrorocket fire, the ship landed a 1000 miles
off target. The USSR had also launched probes to the moon before
us
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President Kennedy had a conversation with NASAs director James
E. Webb and said: "Everything we do ought to... be tied in to
getting on to the Moon ahead of the Russians... we hope to beat the
USSR to demonstrate that instead of being behind by a couple of
years, by God, we passed them. "
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While unmanned Soviet probes had reached the moon before any
U.S craft, American astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first
person to set foot on lunar surface on July 21, 1969.
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Neils first words on the moon That's one small step for a man,
one giant leap for mankind.
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Luna 15 On July 21, 1969, while Apollo 11 astronauts finished
the first human moonwalk, Luna 15 - an unmanned Soviet spacecraft
in lunar orbit at the time, began its descent to the moon. Launched
only three days before the Apollo 11 mission, it was the third
Soviet attempt to return lunar soil back to Earth. The Russian
craft crashed on the moon at 15:50 UT just a few hours before the
scheduled American lift off.
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Its Over! After the Luna 15 failure, the Soviet Union never
made another attempt to go to the moon again, The Space Race was
over