Society+and+space

Erin

The space age began on October 4, 1957. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik, which was the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. The world was surprised when they found out about the Soviet Union's success, because most of the country had been pretty much done for by the dictator Stalin and World War II. Both the Soviet Union and America had had highly secret programs. In the United States some government agencies declassified tons of documents and made them available to the public.

In 1995 the CIA led the declassification of the first American photo satellite program, Corona. They also sponsored a public meeting on the achievements that helped convince many people that discussing the previous classified space achievements could bring positive feedback to the community.

After World War II the USA and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) became increasingly bitter towards each other, even though they weren't at war. Instead, they entered a period called the Cold War. The biggest form of rivalry was the, "Space Race." The Soviet Union and the United States were the places that were involved in the Space Race. Thanks to the help of von Braun and his team, the US army was able to build a rocket powerful enough to launch a satellite. If there would have been a chance the US most likely would have been able to launch a satellite before Sputnik. President Dwight D. Eisenhower thought that this would be an absolutely horrible idea. He believed that using a rocket designed by engineers who had once built rockets to bomb US allies would be sending the wrong message to the American people.

The space race was in America, the Soviet Union and space. America and the Soviet Union were both competing against each other to see who could build the best satellite and launch it into space on the best rocket. The Soviet Union built Sputnik before America had anything even close to being finished.

This topic mattered because people needed to know what was going on with America and the Soviet Union. America and the Soviet Union never got along very well and the Americans needed to know what was going on between the two regions.

Extra Focus: The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957. This had a " Pearl Harbor Effect” on America because this meant to the public that America was behind on launching a satellite. Soon America launched their first satellite called Explorer 1. Explorer 1 was launched on January 31, 1958. Explorer 1 found radiation zones encircling the Earth. The zones were shaped by the Earth's magnetic field which is now called, the Van Allen Radiation Belt, the zones are partially the electrical charges in the atmosphere and the solar radiation that reaches Earth. The U.S. then decided to do a series of scientific missions to the Moon and other planets later in the 1950s and 1960s.


 * Explorer 1**
 * NASA**
 * Sputnik 1**



Bibliography: Steve Garber and Roger Launius, Authors Steven J. Dick, NASA Chief Historian Steve Garber, NASA History Web Curator Site design by NASA HQ Printing & Design

"Sputnik." UXL Science. Online ed. Detroit: UXL, 2003. Student Resource Center - Gold. Thomson Gale. Cook Memorial Public Library. 5 Feb. 2007 <[|http://find.galegroup.com/srcx/infomark.do?&contentSet=GSRC&type=retrieve&tabID=T001&prodId=SRC-1&docId=EJ2109200909&source=gale&srcprod=SRCG&userGroupName=ccscm&version=1.0>.]

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/671/1 Dwayne Day is the guest editor of the forthcoming Cold War space history issue of Space Chronicle. He can be reached at zirconic@earthlink.net.

Book: The History of NASA: Copy write 2000 Ray Spangenburg and Kit Moser All rights reserved. Published simutaneously in Canada. Printed in the United States of America

Pictures: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/image/sputnik_asm.jpg http://aaaprod.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEA/SeaTour/logo-NasaInsignia.gif http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/9802/explorer1_jpl_big.gif