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As we know, during the second half of the XX century, USA and the USSR weren't specially friends, and the Cold War helped this race because both used space technology in satellites to spy on the orher. This led to the start of the race, consisted of seeing who advanced the most in space (first human on the moon, first robot on the moon, first space station with permanent crew...etc). Although it is thought that it ended in the 75, the competitions remained almost until the 90's.
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The R-7 Semiorka was the first intercontinental ballistic missil, launched in 1957. -
The Sputnik 1 was the first artificiall satellite in history. Launched by the USSR, was the first of various USSR satellites with the name Sputnik. -
The dog Laika, Kudryavka in Russian, was the first animal that went to the space orbit in history. The spacecraft was the Sputnik 2, which was a cone of 4 mteres tall and a diameter of 2. Laika only was alive for a few hours, it died beause of overheating and stress. -
The Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by USA, thanks to this satellite, the Van Allen belt, which is a zone in space where there are lots of particles with lot of energy. Its origin was the solar wind caught by the terrestrial magnetic field. -
In 1958, USA launched the first communications satellite, the SCORE. It returned The Earth the 21 of January of 1959. USA aim was to prove that a system of communication based on satellites was possible. -
The Mechta 1, was the first spacecraft that reached the vicinities of the moon. In 1963, it was renamed Luna 1, althought it was knowed in Europe as Lunik 1 -
In September of 1959, the USSR achieved to be the first country that crashed The Moon with an spacecraft, and that was the objective althought it sounds crazy. The spacecraft was called Luna 2 -
The Vanguard 2 was the first satellite which helped humans to know about future climate, it was developed by USA in the first half of 1959. -
USA created tthe first satelllite that was used to observe other parts of the eratht that wa mostly used for military aims and intelligence advancing. It was called the Discoverer 4. -
In August of 1959, the Explorer 6, also knowed as S 2, an American satellite, was the first one to take a picture of The Earth from space. -
In 1959, the USSR took the first picture of the Hidden Side of The Moon, with the Luna 3, the spacecraft used. -
Belka and Strelka were the two dogs which were sent to the space in the Sputnik 5 by the USSR, both of them returned alive. In all dog trips developed by the USSR, the dogs were of female sex because the space suit was designed for its way of peeing. -
Yuri Gagarin was the first human who traveled to the Space in the Vostok 1, he orbited the Earth at a high of 315 km. -
Guerman Titov went to space in the Vostok 2, he completed a total of 17,5 orbits to The Earth. -
The Venera 1 was an USSR spacecraft which achieved the objective of fying over Venus. -
The Testlar 1 was the first satellite which transmuted images to TV and stablished phone calls and telegraph messages. Although they are not working nowadays, they are still orbitnh The Earth. -
The Vostok 3 and 4 were two Russian spacecrafts that were controled by Andrián Nikoláyev and Pável Popóvich, respectively. Both orbited The Earth at the same time and stablished communication by radio between them. -
Canad awas the first country, excepting obviously USA and the USSR which launched a sartellite to the space, it was called the Alouette 1. -
Valentina Vladimírovna Tereshkova was the first woman in history who went to the space, in 1965. This also was the last spacecraft of the Vostok serie, with the Vostok 6. -
The Syncom 2 was the first satellite that orbited The Earth by the Equeator with the same speed as Earth has, so it can provide reliable communications to almost a half of the Earth ( a 40%). -
The three astronaut who took part in the Vosjod 1, went to space with no space suits. The aim of this serie (Vosjos) was to study the human behaving aout of the spacecraft. The Vosjod 1 was very small, so the astronauts used only working suits. -
Alekséi Leónov was the first human who went out of his spacecraft, the Vosjod 2, he was out in space for a total of 12 minutes.
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Gemini 6 and 7 were the first two spacecrafts that "flew" very close to each other, 30 cm exactly. They were next to each other for 20 minutes. -
Luna 9 was the spacecraft which landed in The Moon, Once it landed, it was taking pictures and sending them among data to The Earth during three days. -
The Venera 3 was an USSR spacecraft which went to another planet. The aim of the mission was to land on Venus, but unfortunately it crshed t. -
The Gemini 8 docked Agena, the superior part of a rocket. Also in this mission, Ed White wento out in space for 20 minutes. The main driver of this spacecraft was Neil Amstrong, who would land and walk The Moon some years later. -
Luna 10 was a Russian non-human manned spacecraft which completed a whole orbit to The Moon in April of 1966. It was also the first human-made object which orbited far away from Earth -
The Cosmos 188 and Cosmo 186 were two non-manned by human which achieved the goal of docking. Lthough they connected, ther was no electrical connection because of an aligning failure. -
In December of 1968, EEUU was able to send a human to the orbit of the Moon and completed an orbit. The Apolo 8 was the name of the Spacecraft and completed a total of 10 orbits. -
In July of 1969, USA achieved one of the most important goals in the Space Race, carrying humans to the moon in the Apolo 11 this event supposed one before and one after in the space race, because, although the USSR completed most of goals before, USA achieved first the most important one. -
The Soyuz 4 and 5 were the two spacecrafts which were the first to make a crew exchange. Soyuz 4 completed 48 orbits and Soyuz 5 49. -
The Luna 16 was the spacecraft that went to The Moon an returned with 101 grams of Moon samples -
The Lunojod 1 was a vehicle which went across more than 10km through The Moon during almost 1 year. -
The Venera 7 was the first spacecraft that reached Venus without crashing and sent data of its sufrace
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The Mariner 9 reached the orbit of Mars and it completed two orbits per day for a year. -
The Slayut 1 was the first spacial station, it was in orbit for 175 days until it ran out of fuel and was destroyed by the conrtroled return to the atmosphere.
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The Mars 2 reached Mars, but although its aim was to land on it, the landing system failed and it crashed -
The Mars 3 finally was able to land Mars and once it landed, it kook photos of the surface and clouds to determine temperature, topography, physics...etc. -
The Anik A1 was a Canadian satellite which was mainlybused for emitting in TV -
The Skylab was a space station which was active for 6 years (more or less 2250 days). It was visited by astronauts 3 times. -
The Salyut 3 was an USSR military station although the USSR tried to hide its aim under the name of Salyut. -
The Apolo-Soyuz mission consisted of a docking between Russian and American spacecrafts. Thanks to it, both learned about the space programme and advances of each other. -
EEUU developed Columbia, the space shuttle that achieved missions out of the Earth. It was destroyed when it reentered the Earth's atmosphere in 2003, with 7 astronauts on it. -
The Sliut 7 was the last Russian space station of the Saliut serie. Svetlana Savítskaya reached the stationin other spacecraft and once he was on it, he did the first woman space walking. -
The Mir was the first one to have crew on it at every moment. Although it was planned to be working for 5 years, it was for 13. It completed 86331 total otbits and it had an orbital speed of 7,7 km/s. -
Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov were the first humans in history that were in space for more than one year. The used space station was Mir.