Space Race
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The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between the Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missi
Sputnik asm
A Man on the Moon, AS11 40 5903
Portrait of ASTP crews
Atlantis docked to MIR GPN 2000 001315
Sputnik 1
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Sputnik 1, often referred to as simply Sputnik, was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet
Space Race
…World War II. The competition gained Western public attention with the "Sputnik crisis", when the USSR achieved the first successful satellite launch, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957. It gained momentum when the USSR sent the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space with the orbital flight of Vostok 1 on April 12…
Replica of Sputnik 1 in the Museum of Space and Missile Technology (Saint-Petersburg)
Last remaining piece of Sputnik 1: metal arming key which prevented contact between batteries and transmitter prior to launch; on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
30 kopek USSR stamp depicting Sputnik 1 orbiting the Earth, the Earth orbiting the Sun and the Sun orbiting the centre of the Milky Way galaxy
First ground track of Sputnik 1 on 13 October 1957 4:51 from Rodewisch