sputnikIn 1957, The Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I into orbit, the worlds first artificial satellite. Sputnik was named after the Russian word for satellite. Sputnik was 10 times the size of the American planned satellite, and they were afraid of what that satellite could mean for them. The launch of Sputnik gave America the motivation to fund a better satellite, and in so causing the Space Race. It served as another competition between America and the USSR during the Cold War.
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The Apollo program and the moon landing
The Apollo program was created by NASA as the first program to send humans into space. The program had 11 successful missions of spaceflights. It was thanks to the Apollo program that 12 astronauts were able to walk on the moon. The aircraft used for the Apollo program was the Apollo Command Module. It was a capsule that held room for no more than three astronauts at a time.
It was on July 20th,1969, that the first humans touched the surface of the moon. Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin were the three astronauts who made this dangerous flight into space. It took NASA 7 months after sending Apollo 8 with the first manned flight to send Apollo 11 into orbit. |