The USA and the Space Race

The first to enter the competition were the Russians who placed an artificial satellite (Sputnik) into the Earth’s orbit on October 4, 1957. It was vital for the Americans, who had now good reasons to fear their opponents’ nuclear power, to reply. Moreover, as great explorers they were angry and upset to acknowledge that the Russians had started to explore a new territory before them. They had crossed a border that no one had crossed before!
In 1958 the USA launched Explorer I and President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the NASA, well-determined to explore space, whatever the costs.

One year later the Russians launched Luna 2 and in April 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first person to travel in outer space. One month later, after testing chimpanzees, Alan Shepard was the first American to be sent into space.
A few weeks later, President John F. Kennedy announced that an American would land on the moon in the years to come. And he was right because on July 16, 1969 Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins embarked on Apollo 11 and on July 20, Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, declaring

Consequently, after such a brilliant feat, the world could declare the Americans winners of the Space Race after 12 years of attempts and failures on both sides. It was a fantastic adventure for the rest of the world who could follow the exploits of the astronauts on a new medium, the television, and the latter were of course considered as the new heroes of the world. The Russians were the great losers of the race, unable to prove the world the power of the communist system in spite of all their efforts.

The Cold War ended in 1975 when a Russian-American spacecraft was launched, symbolizing a considerable warming in the relations between the two powers.