Although the race into space was driven in great measure by the Cold War (the prolonged conflict for world dominance from 1945 to 1991 between the United States and the Soviet Union), the thrill of adventure and thirst for scientific knowledge still...

On October 4, 1957, Americans were stunned by the news that for the first time, an artificial satellite had been put into orbit around the earth—not by the United States, which had been assumed to be the world's technological leader, but...

At the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union began a decades-long battle for political, military, and technological superiority. In the absence of any real fighting, space exploration provided a focus for the competition between...

From the earliest forays into commercial space, competition has been fierce. The United States has an established lead in the design, construction, and marketing of satellites. At the end of the twentieth century, U.S. satellites were being launched...

The Space Race was a competition of space exploration between the United States and Soviet Union, which lasted roughly from 1957 to 1975. It involved the efforts to explore outer space with artificial satellites, to send humans into space, and to land...