This had a "Pearl Harbor" effect on American public opinion, creating an illusion of a technological gap and provided the impetus for increased spending for aerospace endeavors, technical and scientific educational programs, and the chartering of new federal agencies to manage air and space research and development. Project Vanguard enjoyed exceptional publicity throughout the second half of 1955, and all of 1956, but the technological demands upon the program were too great and the funding levels too small to ensure success.Ī full-scale crisis resulted on Octowhen the Soviets launched Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite as its IGY entry. It used the non-military Viking rocket as its basis while an Army proposal to use the Redstone ballistic missile as the launch vehicle waited in the wings. The Naval Research Laboratory's Project Vanguard was chosen on 9 September 1955 to support the IGY effort, largely because it did not interfere with high-priority ballistic missile development programs. The Soviet Union quickly followed suit, announcing plans to orbit its own satellite. Eisenhower approved a plan to orbit a scientific satellite as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) for the period, Jto December 31, 1958, a cooperative effort to gather scientific data about the Earth. A major step forward came when President Dwight D. During this period, space exploration emerged as a major area of contest and became known as the space race.ĭuring the late 1940s, the Department of Defense pursued research and rocketry and upper atmospheric sciences as a means of assuring American leadership in technology. After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in the Cold War, a broad contest over the ideologies and allegiances of the nonaligned nations. NASA's birth was directly related to the pressures of national defense. ![]() "An Act to provide for research into the problems of flight within and outside the Earth's atmosphere, and for other purposes." With this simple preamble, the Congress and the President of the United States created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on October 1, 1958.
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