to demonstrate their respective technological supremacy and guard themselves against rising nuclear threat (4).
The Space Age Though theories involving space travel had been proposed since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Space Age officially began when the Soviet Union successfully launched the first unmanned satellite Sputnik 1 into orbit on October 4, 1957 (5, 6). The Sputnik mission sparked a fierce “Space Race” that defined one of the focal points of the Cold War and served as the primary motivation for the creation of the United States’ own space agency NASA—the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (6). After the Soviet Union and the United States successfully launched their first manned spacecrafts—Vostok 1 and Freedom 7, respectively—into space in 1961, the competing nations turned their attention toward landing the first man on the moon (6). NASA began a series of manned Apollo missions beginning in October 11, 1968, and the Soviets followed suit with development of the impressive, albeit flawed, N1 rocket (7). The competition culminated with Apollo 11’s successful touchdown on the lunar surface in July 1969 (4). With the success of the U.S. lunar missions and the easing of U.S.-Soviet tensions during the 1970s, both of the nations’ space programs lost much of the support and motivation to carry out further ambitious projects (8). Nixon rejected
NASA’s visions for the development of lunar orbit stations and Mars landings by the 1980s, while the Soviets resigned themselves to their loss following four failed lunar launches between 1969 and 1972 (4,6).
After the Space Race While the two nations continued to use their respective space programs for military purposes, increasing emphasis was placed on less aggressive goals, such as research and mutual cooperation. The U.S. and Russia launched their first space stations in 1973 and 1971, respectively, with the stated purpose of conducting scientific experiments (6). Crews from the two nations met for the first time in orbit as part of the ApolloSoyuz Test Project in 1975, paving the way for further international missions and the eventual creation of an International Space Station (6). Shortly afterwards, the U.S. also launched two research spacecrafts—Voyager 1 and Voyager 2—to explore the outer solar system, as well as the first Mars probes that marked the beginning of a series of unmanned rover missions to the red planet (6). NASA’s introduction of the space shuttle in 1981 revolutionized space travel, allowing astronauts to glide back to Earth on reusable space vehicles instead of enduring dramatic splash-downs upon reentry (9). Until its retirement in 2011, the shuttle fleet sent American astronauts on a wide range of research experiments and maintenance projects, including satellite repair, resupply missions to the International Space Station, and the orbital launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990 (6,10). By end of the Space Race, a number of nations around the world also initiated their own space-faring agencies and developed satellitelaunching capabilities. While states in Europe collectively established a shared European Space Agency (ESA), countries in Asia were far less cooperative. China, Japan, and India each pursued independent goals and largely built their own programs, ushering in a new rivalry that many perceive as a regional analog to the U.S.-Soviet Space Race (11). For these nations, spaceflight capability served and continues to serve as an extension of their efforts to increase national influence and prestige while checking the powers of neighboring competitors (11).
“Spaceflight capability served and continues to serve as an extension of [a country’s] efforts to increase national influence and prestige while checking the powers of neighboring competitors.”
Present A Second “Space Age”
Image courtesy of U.S. Air Force
Figure 2: Sputnik I exhibit in the Missile & Space Gallery at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. Sputnik, which means “satellite” in Russian, was the Soviet entry in a scientific race to launch the first satellite ever. SPRING 2013
As more countries, mostly in Asia and the Americas, join the ranks of existing space powers, foreign rocket launch programs and space exploration missions have become more sophisticated and universal. Most notable of these developments occurred in 2003, when the Chinese succeeded in independently attaining manned 9