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Macron Speech for the spatial europ mission

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Macron Speech for the spatial europ mission

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NASA Confirms DART Mission Impact Changed Asteroid's Motion in Space

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Analysis of data obtained over the past two weeks by NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) investigation team shows the spacecraft's kinetic impact with its target asteroid, Dimorphos, successfully altered the asteroid's orbit.

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The space race was a series of competitive technology demonstrations between the United States and the Soviet Union, aiming to show superiority in spaceflight.

It was an outgrowth of the mid-20th-century Cold War, a tense global conflict that pitted the ideologies of capitalism and communism against one another, according to an online exhibit from the National Air and Space Museum.

From the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, the two superpowers were embroiled in a bitter competition over who could 'conquer' outer space first. Beginning with the launch of the first satellite and culminating with a joint mission between the two superpowers, the space race was a unique period in space exploration.

How the space race began

Following the end of the Second World War, a bitter ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union known as the Cold War, began. The Cold War had many battlefields, from the United States' intervention in Vietnam to the nuclear arms race. Another area of conflict was the battle to 'conquer' the exploration of space first. The first aim of this "space race" was the launching of an unmanned object, a satellite, which could successfully orbit Earth.

The United States first began planning this venture in 1954, according to a NASA article. However, on Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union announced that they had successfully launched a satellite, Sputnik. A month later they followed this with the launch of Sputnik 2, which carried a dog named Laika, making the Soviets the first to send a living creature into outer space, according to the Royal Museums Greenwich.

In the United States, the response to the news that the Soviet Union had sent an object into outer space, caused public panic. "When Sputnik launches, President Eisenhower doesn't see it as an existential threat," according to Brian C Odom, acting Chief Historian for NASA. "He sees it as just what it was, the Soviet Union launching a transceiver transmitter into orbit. But the American public saw it differently, right because they saw it as this larger cold war competition."

Following the launch of Sputnik, it was deemed appropriate that a private organization should be founded in order to best facilitate the burgeoning American Space Program, according to NASA. In late 1957, America's first attempt at a satellite, the Vanguard TV-3, almost immediately crashed back onto the launchpad, according to The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Although the successful launch of Explorer 1 on Jan. 31, 1958, did help soften this blow, it was still decided that a private body should be set up.

There were other factors involved too. "Eisenhower's chief problem during this period was which branch of the military would be responsible for developing a launch vehicle," according to Odom, "however, this was problematic because it put the various branches in competition with each other. Eisenhower was really trying to disentangle all the military branches from being in competition with each other and move space exploration into a government agency dedicated to peaceful, open communication."

NASA officially opened for business on Oct. 1, 1958. However, the early years of NASA were a far cry from what the organization would become. The fledgling institution was in the process of finding its feet and discovering how it would approach the various problems concerned with launching both humans and objects into space. "In those early years, particularly 1958-1961, NASA was working to understand what its overall program would be," Odom said.

"What were its priorities, where would it apply the majority of its funding? There was a huge element of NASA that was thinking, what are the scientific questions that this agency is going to answer? Questions like what can we do with satellites in space? It was kind of a wild west, It was trying to figure out what it wanted to be."

The first man into space

On April 12, 1961, Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man into space when he successfully completed a 108-minute flight orbiting Earth a single time, According to New Scientist. Following the flight, Gagarin became a celebrity within the Soviet Union but was kept from returning to space due to the authority's fears that, were there to be an accident, they could lose a useful propaganda tool, according to the . However, on March 27, 1968, Gagarin died in an accident during a routine training flight, according to .

A month after Gagarin's historic flight, on May 5, 1961, the United States was able to catch up with their Soviet Rivals, when Navy Test pilot Alan Shepard became the second man into space, according to The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Because of the placement of the portholes in the capsule, Shepard was, unfortunately, unable to view any stars, according to his flight report.

"Following Shepard's flight in May 1961, it became very clear that the space race was continuing," Odom said. "President Kennedy committed to the lunar program and once that commitment was made, the resources came with it. NASA's attention for the next seven or eight years was focused on putting a man on the moon."

A major turning point in the space race occurred that same month when U.S. President John F. Kennedy stood before legislators in Congress and announced that he had committed NASA to landing people on the moon before the end of the decade.

Dangers of the space race

Alongside the victories there were also many losses, reaffirming just how dangerous space flight could be. On Jan. 27, 1967, the U.S. program had its first major disaster when a flash fire broke out during a simulated launch for the first lunar module, . The first death of an astronaut during a mission was that of the Soviet Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. On April 24, 1967, Komarov's craft Soyuz 1 crashed when its parachute became tangled, according to the .

But how does contemporary, or more recent spaceflight, compare to these early pioneering years? "One thing to stress is that space exploration has not gotten easier," Odom said.

"The challenges that were there in the very beginning are still the challenges that we face today. Yes, they were developing brand new systems and putting human beings at the top of rockets that were built for nuclear delivery systems [the Mercury and Gemini programs] but what we've learned over the decades of space exploration is that it hasn't gotten easier."

Aim for the moon

On Sept. 12, 1962, President Kennedy delivered a speech at Rice University Stadium, providing a clear goal for Americans in the developing space race: to put a man on the moon with the Apollo Program. "We choose to go to the Moon" Kennedy began" in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills," according to the JFK Library.

Kennedy's speech followed an earlier one made to Congress on May 25, 1961, following Yuri Gagarin's successful spaceflight, according to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Shortly after this speech, NASA's budget would increase by 89% and its research would now have one clear long-term aim in mind - though there would be other victories and developments in the short term.

"The space race was really a race to the moon," according to Odom."Kennedy wanted to get to the moon first. It would be a great propaganda coup. In the global South, you had a lot of countries becoming independent from former colonial powers. What system would they follow? Would they follow the U.S. liberal democracy or would they follow the Soviet example of communism? Kennedy saw the race to the moon as a way to demonstrate American technological power and the benefit of one system over another."

Who won the space race?

On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 launched from the Kennedy space center. Four days later, at 10.56 PM EDT on July 20, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. Although conspiracy theories persist that the moon landing was a hoax, more than half a billion people watched the historic event, which was broadcast on television.

This was a victory for the United States over the Soviet Union, whose own lunar program had made a number of failed attempts. Between 1963 and 1965, 11 rockets had been launched carrying small landing objects with airbags to cushion the impact, all unsuccessful, according to Popular Mechanics.

Achieving this goal in 1966, they then shifted their research to putting the first man on the moon. However, various issues with rocket launches caused the Soviet scientists to consider a robotic launch instead. Days before the Apollo rocket took off, the Soviet Luna 15 launched. This automated module was intended to achieve a soft landing and bring back samples from the lunar surface, however, communication was lost and it is suspected it crashed into the moon's surface, according to The New York Times.

Over the next few years, each side in the space race reached several further world-firsts. The Americans achieved the first interplanetary flyby when Mariner 2 sped past Venus in 1962, followed by the first Mars flyby in 1965 with Mariner 4.

The Soviets sent the first woman into space, Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963 - a feat that would take the U.S. 20 more years to achieve). Other nations launched their own rockets and satellites, including Canada in 1962, France in 1965, and Japan and China in 1970.

Though there were additional American and Soviet missions, after the successes of the Apollo program, the space race was widely believed to have been won by the U.S. Eventually, as the Cold War came to an end, both sides agreed to cooperate in space and construct the International Space Station, beginning in 1998.

As the 1970s began, relations between the two superpowers improved and discussions on topics such as arms control began according to the Office of the Historian.

Following the moon landing, the Soviet space program switched its focus to placing the first space station in orbit, according to Astronomy.com.

However, the astronauts in the Soyuz 11 capsule were all killed when a faulty valve, triggered after the instrument modules were separated from the orbital capsule, caused an oxygen leak. The Soyuz 11 crew are the only humans to have died in space, according to The National Space Center.

In 1975, as a symbol of cooperation between the two superpowers, a joint mission (called the Apollo-Soyuz mission) between the U.S. and the USSR was launched. On July 17 an Apollo shuttle docked with the Soyuz mission, and the crews greeted each other, according to NASA. symbolic handshake, broadcast globally, between commanders Tom Stafford and Alexi Leonov. In many ways, this can be seen as a symbolic end to the space race.

Yet despite the space race coming to an end, its impact is irrefutable. "We can't forget about the Cold War context for all this activity and the seemingly existential threat of the Soviet Union," according to Odom.

"As a historian looking at this from a contextual standpoint, I can tell you that I don't think Kennedy would commit to going to the moon without the race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Without the Apollo program, how far and how quickly would our technology have advanced to the point it is at today? The Cold War made the moon landing a priority in Kennedy's mind and his commitment to it really does change America and American technology."

Is there a current space race?

Now, some believe that a new space race has begun with the United States pitted against superpowers such as China and India, as well as old rival Russia. But some criticize this notion.

"The Russians don't have a stated public interest in going to the moon with human spaceflight," Wendy Whitman Cobb, a political scientist at Cameron University in Oklahoma, told Space.com. "[The Chinese] have taken a purposefully slow, methodical approach to spaceflight and for them, I think the motivations are more in the military and national-prestige realms."

The world is much more complex today than it was during the Cold War when two major superpowers vied for dominance. Now, private companies, such as Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, have joined in a new contest to show off their spaceflight capabilities, according to the BBC. While there are some competitive aspects, such as the potential for fights over limited lunar resources, tomorrow's space races will involve a greater number of actors and more muddled win-lose scenarios than before.

Additional resources:

The NASA History Division contains a wealth of information and documentation for anyone wishing to research the history of the organization. For a comprehensive list of important dates relating to the Space Race, check out Royal Museums Greenwich timeline. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has a number of items related to the space race among it's collections, which can be viewed .

Timeline of the space race

Oct 4, 1957: The Soviet Union successfully sends the first man-made object into space. Sputnik is the world's first orbital satellite.

November 3, 1957: The second experimental spacecraft successfully launched into earth orbit, Sputnik 2 contained onboard the dog Laika - the first biological organism to enter space.

January 31, 1958: The United States launches its first satellite, Explorer 1, following the launch of Sputnik three months earlier.

October 1, 1958: On 29th July 1958, President Eisenhower signed the Aeronautics and Space Act which established the organisation of the same name, commonly known as NASA.

September 12, 1959: The Soviet Union launches Lunar 2, the first spacecraft to successfully land on the surface of the moon.

April 12, 1961: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man into space when he successfully completed a 108 minute flight orbiting the earth a single time.

August 19, 1960: The USSR launches Sputnik 5 carrying two dogs, Belka and Strelka, who became the first animals to return to earth following a day in space.

January 31, 1961: NASA sends Ham, a Chimpanzee into space. Despite the capsule losing pressure, Ham is saved by his spacesuit and returns to earth.

May 5, 1961: Alan Shepard becomes the first American astronaut in space. Purportedly, due to the placement of the portholes he was unable to see the stars.

May 25 1961: President Kennedy makes a speech to congress in which he announces that the United States will put a man on the moon before the end of the decade.

June 16, 1963: Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman into space, orbiting the earth 48 times across almost three days.

July 14-15, 1965: The Mariner 4 becomes the first spacecraft not only to successfully travel to Mars but also the first to take a photograph of another planet from space.

March 18, 1965: For 12 minutes Soviet Cosmonaut Alexi Leonov floats freely in outer space on the end of nearly 16 foot long tether, becoming the first astronaut to 'space walk'.

February 21, 1967: Astronauts Virgil I Grissom, Edward Higgins White and Roger Chaffee lose their lives when a fire breaks out on their spacecraft during a launch rehearsal test.

July 20, 1969: At 10.56 PM EDT Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.

April 11-17, 1970: When an oxygen tank explodes aboard Nasa's third moon landing mission, Apollo 13, astronauts are fortunately able to return home in the lunar module, averting any loss of life.

April 19, 1971: Salyut 1 is launched by the U.S.S.R. becoming the first space station, orbiting the earth 3,000 times during 157 days in orbit.

July 15-24, 1975: As a policy of detente leads to a cooling of tensions between the two superpowers, a joint mission between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. is launched.

Bibliography

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The space race was a bitter competition that took place in the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

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After World War II drew to a close in the mid-20th century, a new conflict began. Known as the Cold War, this battle pitted the world's two great powers-the democratic, capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union-against each other. Beginning in the late 1950s, space became another dramatic arena for this competition, as each side sought to prove the superiority of its technology, its military firepower and-by extension-its political-economic system.

Causes of the Space Race

By the mid-1950s, the U.S.-Soviet Cold War had worked its way into the fabric of everyday life in both countries, fueled by the arms race and the growing threat of nuclear weapons, wide-ranging espionage and counter-espionage between the two countries, war in Korea and a clash of words and ideas carried out in the media. These tensions would continue throughout the space race, exacerbated by such events as the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the outbreak of war in Southeast Asia.

Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for Cold War competition. On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile launched Sputnik (Russian for "traveler"), the world's first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be placed into the Earth's orbit. Sputnik's launch came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one, to most Americans. In the United States, space was seen as the next frontier, a logical extension of the grand American tradition of exploration, and it was crucial not to lose too much ground to the Soviets. In addition, this demonstration of the overwhelming power of the R-7 missile-seemingly capable of delivering a nuclear warhead into U.S. air space-made gathering intelligence about Soviet military activities particularly urgent.

Did you know? After Apollo 11 landed on the moon's surface in July 1969, six more Apollo missions followed by the end of 1972. Arguably the most famous was Apollo 13, whose crew managed to survive an explosion of the oxygen tank in their spacecraft's service module on the way to the moon.

NASA Is Created

In 1958, the United States launched its own satellite, Explorer I, designed by the U.S. Army under the direction of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. That same year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a public order creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA), a federal agency dedicated to space exploration.

Eisenhower also created two national security-oriented space programs that would operate simultaneously with NASA's program. The first, spearheaded by the U.S. Air Force, dedicated itself to exploiting the military potential of space. The second, led by the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA), the Air Force and a new organization called the National Reconnaissance Office (the existence of which was kept classified until the early 1990s) was code-named Corona; it would use orbiting satellites to gather intelligence on the Soviet Union and its allies.

Space Race Heats Up: Men (And Chimps) Orbit Earth

In 1959, the Soviet space program took another step forward with the launch of Luna 2, the first space probe to hit the moon. In April 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit Earth, traveling in the capsule-like spacecraft Vostok 1. For the U.S. effort to send a man into space, dubbed Project Mercury, NASA engineers designed a smaller, cone-shaped capsule far lighter than Vostok; they tested the craft with chimpanzees and held a final test flight in March 1961 before the Soviets were able to pull ahead with Gagarin's launch. On May 5, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space (though not in orbit).

Later that May, President John F. Kennedy made the bold, public claim that the U.S. would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. In February 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, and by the end of that year, the foundations of NASA's lunar landing program-dubbed Project Apollo -were in place.

Achievements of Apollo

From 1961 to 1964, NASA's budget was increased almost 500 percent, and the lunar landing program eventually involved some 34,000 NASA employees and 375,000 employees of industrial and university contractors. Apollo suffered a setback in January 1967, when three astronauts were killed after their spacecraft caught fire during a launch simulation. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union's lunar landing program proceeded tentatively, partly due to internal debate over its necessity and to the untimely death (in January 1966) of Sergey Korolyov, chief engineer of the Soviet space program.

December 1968 saw the launch of Apollo 8, the first manned space mission to orbit the moon, from NASA's massive launch facility on Merritt Island, near Cape Canaveral, Florida. On July 16, 1969, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins set off on the Apollo 11 space mission, the first lunar landing attempt. After landing successfully on July 20, Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon's surface; he famously called the momen t "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Who Won the Space Race?

By landing on the moon, the United States effectively "won" the space race that had begun with Sputnik's launch in 1957. For their part, the Soviets made four failed attempts to launch a lunar landing craft between 1969 and 1972, including a spectacular launch-pad explosion in July 1969. From beginning to end, the American public's attention was captivated by the space race, and the various developments by the Soviet and U.S. space programs were heavily covered in the national media. This frenzy of interest was further encouraged by the new medium of television. Astronauts came to be seen as the ultimate American heroes, and earth-bound men and women seemed to enjoy living vicariously through them. Soviets, in turn, were pictured as the ultimate villains, with their massive, relentless efforts to surpass America and prove the power of the communist system.

With the conclusion of the space race, U.S. government interest in lunar missions waned after the early 1970s. In 1975, the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission sent three U.S. astronauts into space aboard an Apollo spacecraft that docked in orbit with a Soviet-made Soyuz vehicle. When the commanders of the two crafts officially greeted each other, their " handshake in space " served to symbolize the gradual improvement of U.S.-Soviet relations in the late Cold War era.

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The Space Race: Timeline, Cold War & Facts | HISTORY

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The Space Race refers to the period of competition over space exploration between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War.

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Starship Overview

SpaceX's Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket - collectively referred to as Starship - represent a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond. Starship will be the world's most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, capable of carrying up to 150 metric tonnes fully reusable and 250 metric tonnes expendable.

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SpaceX's Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket - collectively referred to as Starship - represent a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond. Starship will be the world's most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, capable of carrying up to 150 metric tonnes fully reusable and 250 metric tonnes expendable.

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Following World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States engaged in a struggle to prove their superiority. The Cold War constituted nearly fifty years of physical battles, technological advancements, and diplomatic engagements. By 1960, the battles extended beyond Earth's gravity. Space became another avenue of competition because of the prospect of atmospheric control and the undeniable message it sent to the international community. National leaders from both countries recognized the opportunity of space exploration from a political perspective and began heavily funding missions. Dominance in the skies was far more important than land battles; it was a way to prove unchallenged superiority to the entire world. From the beginning, the Space Race was an extension of this ideological battle between the two nations. Space became the final frontier for the United States and Soviet Union to compete to prove their status as sole superpower.

Sputnik 1: October 4, 1957 - The Soviet Union's first spacecraft launch changed the world overnight. Sputnik was the first artificial satellite to enter the atmosphere and passed over the United States multiple times daily. The world had never seen this technology, and the possibilities and dangers were endless, sparking fear across the globe. Sputnik is largely considered to be the "starting point" of the Space Race because of its effect on both countries' national agendas.

Laika the Dog, the first earthling to be launched into space. Wikimedia Commons

Sputnik 2: November 3, 1957 - Laika, the dog from the USSR, made history by becoming the first live organism launched into space. The Soviets launched Sputnik II less than a month after its predecessor to learn about the effects of space on animals and the conditions under which they could survive. Unfortunately, Laika's trip was designed to be one way. She died shortly after takeoff due to the stress of the launch.

Explorer 1: January 31, 1958 - The United States' response to Sputnik 1 was only 80.75-inches long, but the entire setup (a Jupiter-C rocket used to send the diminutive satellite into orbit) stood 71.25-feet tall on the launchpad. Explorer 1's launch made international headlines but fell flat in comparison to the Soviet Union's two satellites that were already in orbit.

Opening of NASA: July 29, 1958 - Concerned with the speed and success of the Soviet space program, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating both a committee and agency that were focused on American space exploration and dominance. The formation of NASA was the first concrete step of a national commitment to winning the Space Race.
Luna 1: January 2, 1959 -
The Soviet Union sent a spacecraft over the surface of the moon. It flew approximately 5,000 kilometers overhead two days after launch.

Vostok 1: April 12, 1961 - Yuri Gagarin simultaneously becomes the first person in space and the first person to orbit the Earth. His one hour and forty-eight-minute flight astounded millions, but his safe return was the biggest triumph. This was monumental for the Soviet's space program, and a crushing blow for NASA scientists.

Mercury Redstone 3: May 5, 1961 - Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space, completing a suborbital flight in just over 15 minutes.

Kennedy promises a man on the moon by 1970: May 25, 1961 - Before a special joint session of Congress, President John Kennedy quells fears of a Soviet victory in space by promising to have an American astronaut on the moon by the end of the decade. Click here to watch the full speech.

Vostok 2: August 6, 1961 - Gherman Titov, the backup pilot for Vostok 1, got his turn in space when he became the second man to orbit the Earth. He spent just over a day in space, becoming a test subject for the effect of space on humans.

Mercury Atlas 6: February 20, 1962 - John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth. While this was a sigh of relief for NASA scientists, they were still severely behind the Soviets technologically.

John Glenn in his Mercury flight suit Wikimedia Commons

Sergey Korolyov dies of a heart attack: January 16, 1966 - Korolyov, a Soviet rocket engineer, was largely responsible for the success of the Sputnik and Vostok programs. Without his guidance, the Soviet engineers must navigate a lunar landing on their own.

Luna 12: October 22, 1966 - This Soviet probe returned the first images of the far side of the moon. It entered lunar orbit three days after launch.

Luna IX, a similar version of the probe. NASA

Apollo 1: January 27, 1967 - Tragedy struck when a fire swept through the command module of the Apollo 1 spacecraft. Millions of people around the globe witnessed the deaths of Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee on television. It was a real blow to those rooting for the United States to win the space race.

Apollo 8: December 21, 1968 - This was the first successful crewed mission to orbit the moon, turning the tide of the Space Race. These astronauts took photos that were immensely helpful to the Apollo 11 landing preparation.

Apollo 11: July 16, 1969-July 20, 1969 - Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins fulfilled the promise Kennedy made, nearly ten years prior, of a lunar landing. They touched down on the moon's surface four days after the launch.

Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the moon. Niel Armstrong can be seen reflected in Aldrin's visor. Wikimedia Commons

Looking back, it is hard to imagine the two global superpowers spending billions of dollars on space exploration in an attempt to "out-do" the other. In the context of the Cold War, however, space was the most important battleground. The message sent by superior scientific equipment led people to many other conclusions, specifically military capabilities. Apollo 11's success solidified the United States' position in the global community, leaving behind all previous Soviet successes. More than a billion people viewed the historic landing, and the moment overwhelmed Americans with the feeling of dominance. The moon landing united the country with a sense of insurmountable pride. The United States had won the Space Race, a competition more significant than any earthly battle. While Cold War tensions were in no way reduced, American citizens regained confidence that they belonged to the "superior" nation.

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The US is locked in a space race with China and the country needs to "watch out" that its rival does not gain a foothold and try to dominate lunar resources, Nasa's top official has warned.

The assessment came from the Nasa administrator, Bill Nelson, a former astronaut and Florida senator, who went on to warn that China could eventually claim to "own" the moon's resource-rich areas.

The contest between the US and China, he added, was intensifying and the next two years could determine which country achieves an advantage.

"It is a fact: we're in a space race," Nelson told Politico. "And it is true that we better watch out that they don't get to a place on the moon under the guise of scientific research. And it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they say, 'Keep out, we're here, this is our territory.'"

Nelson cited Chinese aggression over islands in the South China Sea, where Beijing has established military bases, as evidence of its territorial ambition. "If you doubt that, look at what they did with the Spratly Islands," he said.

Last year, China's space program put up an Earth-orbiting space station and has mounted several lunar orbiting and sample-retrieving missions. A third phase of the program, to establish an autonomous lunar research station near the Moon's south pole, is scheduled for 2025.

In December, the Chinese government offered its vision for a crewed lunar landing, space transportation, infrastructure and space governance. China has also announced the goal of landing taikonauts on the moon by the end of this decade.

Students listen to an introduction to the Chang'e 5 moon sample-return spacecraft, at the InnoTech Expo in Hong Kong, China, last month. Photograph: Tyrone Siu/Reuters

Nasa, meanwhile, recently completed the 26-day Artemis I mission to take pictures of the lunar surface. Future missions are designed toward establishing more activity on the moon. However, the US is also focused on Mars.

US military brass have also sounded alarm over Chinese militarization of space and attendant security concerns.

"It's entirely possible they could catch up and surpass us," Space Force Lt Gen Nina Armagno said on a visit to Australia. "The progress they've made has been stunning - stunningly fast."

But Beijing has rejected some US interpretations of the motives behind China's space push. "Outer space is not a wrestling ground," Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, told Politico.

The spokesman said that some US officials had "spoken irresponsibly to misrepresent the normal and legitimate space endeavors of China".

"China always advocates the peaceful use of outer space, opposes the weaponization of and arms race in outer space, and works actively toward building a community with a shared future for mankind in the space domain," the statement added.

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'We're in a space race': Nasa sounds alarm at Chinese designs on moon

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The US is locked in a space race with China and the country needs to "watch out" that its rival does not gain a foothold and try to dominate lunar resources, Nasa's top official has warned.

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Looking at its achievements over the past decade, nobody would doubt China is aiming to win the new space race. Not only has it been the only country to land on the Moon in about 40 years, and the first to soft land on its far side, it has also planted a flag on lunar soil and brought samples back to Earth.

The race between several nations and private companies, however, is far from over. China is now approaching Mars with its Tianwen-1 mission, due to arrive on February 10. A successful insertion into orbit - the rover won't land until May - will mark another crucial milestone for more than one reason.

Mars may be close to Earth, but it is a challenging target. Nothing demonstrates this better than the figures. Out of 49 missions up to December 2020, only about 20 have been successful. Not all these failures were attempts by newbies or early endeavours. In 2016, The European Space Agency's Schiaparelli Mars Explorer crashed on the surface. Also, ongoing technical issues have forced ESA and its Russian partner Roscosmos to postpone its next mission, ExoMars, until 2022.

China is not the only country nearing Mars. On February 9, a UAE probe, Hope, will attempt the same insertion manoeuvre. It is not a direct competitor to the Chinese mission (the probe will just orbit the planet to study the martian weather), but ( Nasa's Perseverance rover), set to arrive a week later, definitively is.

To further raise the stakes for China, among the handful of countries that have managed the notoriously tricky insertion manoeuvre into orbit, there is one Asian country there already: India, China's direct competitor in space but on Earth as well.

wikipedia, CC BY-SA

The Indian Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), aka Mangalyaan, reached Mars in 2014 - the first to make it at its maiden mission. This is one reason why a successful outcome of Tianwen-1 is so important for China's status as the new space power: it's a way to reassert its space dominance over its neighbour. Unlike for India, it's not the first time China has attempted a mission to Mars (the previous one, Yinghuo-1, in 2011, failed on launch). However, on this occasion, the odds for success look a lot better.

You can listen to an interview with Steffi Paladini in the first episode of our new podcast, The Conversation Weekly - the world explained by experts. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Space Age 2.0

Different countries have different development models when it comes to space, so the new space race is partly a competition for having the best approach. This reflects the specific character of the so-called Space Age 2.0, which, compared to the first one, looks more diverse, and where non-US actors, public and private, feature prominently, especially Asian ones. If China leads the pack, so does its vision.

But there are bigger things at stake. The development effort behind China's space sector is still largely government funded and military led. According to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressional commission of the US government, China considers space as a " tool of geopolitical and diplomatic competition". It is clear that, together with cyberspace, the cosmos has become a fundamental new warfighting domain, where the US are the main - but not the only - adversary. That means commercial considerations come second for many countries, even though they have become increasingly important in the overall scheme of things.

China has already enacted five-year plans for its space activities, the latest of which ended in 2020 with more 140 launches. More missions are planned: a new orbital space station, the retrieval of martian samples and a Jupiter exploratory mission among them.

While the resources committed by the country remain largely an unknown (we only know what's included in the five-year plans), US estimates for 2017 put this figure at US$11 billion (£8 billion), second only to the US itself - Nasa's budget for the same year was about US$20 billion (£15 billion).

India has taken quite a different approach, where civilian and commercial interests have long been predominant. Following the Nasa's model of transparency, the country publishes reports of its activities and the annual spending (about US$1 billion yearly (£740,000) of its space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

Different in ambitions, scope and investments, the Indian space programme has achieved some remarkable successes, such as commercialising affordable launching services to countries eager to send their own satellites into orbit. In 2017, India made history with the largest number of satellites - 104 - ever launched by a rocket on a single missionto date, all but three foreign owned and built (that record has only been beaten by SpaceX a few days ago, with 143 satellites). Even more impressive is the comparatively low cost of India's Mars mission, US$74 million (£55 million) - about ten times less expensive than Nasa's Maven mission. India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, quipped that the whole mission cost less than the Hollywood movie, Gravity.

Due to geopolitical and rivalry concerns, this might be about to change. India's government released its 2019-20 annual report, which shows a growing military involvement in the space sector. And another Moon and Venus missions are well on the Indian ISRO plans, in case the Chinese were not already motivated enough in making Tianwen-1 a resounding success. Space Race 2.0 is definitively warming up.

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How Mars became the prize for the new space race - and why China is hellbent on winning it

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Looking at its achievements over the past decade, nobody would doubt China is aiming to win the new space race. Not only has it been the only country to land on the Moon in about 40 years, and the first to soft land on its far side, it has also planted a flag on lunar soil and brought samples back to Earth.

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(Image credit: Roscosmos)

Russia has its eyes on a space station of its own.

The nation announced this week that it intends to pull out of the International Space Station (ISS) consortium after 2024. The timing of that move is uncertain, but Russia wants it to dovetail with the readiness of the planned Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS).

We just got a better idea of what ROSS will look like and how it will operate (if the outpost does indeed end up being built), thanks to pictures and information released by Roscosmos, Russia's federal space agency. For example, the first phase of the outpost's assembly, targeted to begin in 2028, appears to include a core module, a possible new supply ship and a new transport vehicle. A second phase, expected to commence in 2030, would add two more large modules.
Related: Russia says it will leave the International Space Station after 2024
The design of ROSS, however, is by no means fixed; for example, it may be placed in an orbit of 51.6 degrees (similar to that of the ISS) or in a near-polar, 97 degree orbit, depending on which orientation Russia finds more favorable among its launch sites.

Roscosmos has framed the impending ISS departure as an opportunity to shift to the new outpost.

"We need to decide what to do in the future, and already begin work on manned programs that will be implemented after this period," Vladimir Solovyov said in a lengthy interview (opens in new tab) published on Tuesday (July 26) by Roscosmos, which discussed ROSS in detail.

Solovyov is the flight director of the Russian segment of the ISS and the general designer of RSC Energia, the prime contractor for Russia's human spaceflight program. The Roscosmos interview is in Russian; the translation was provided by Google.

Solovyov discussed the aging Russian modules on the ISS, which has been hosting astronauts since November 2020, and Russia's apparent disconnect with the new, moon-based direction that NASA is now taking with its human spaceflight program.

Solovyov said maintenance is becoming a problem for the Russian ISS modules, which, in some cases, are nearly 25 years old despite being rated for a design life of 15 years.

"Recently, there has been a tendency to increase the time spent by cosmonauts on maintenance and repair of onboard systems, that have exhausted their resources. The crew has less and less time to carry out scientific experiments," Solovyov said.

Moreover, Russia has not expressed interest in joining other ISS partners in the NASA-led Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the lunar surface in 2025 or thereabouts. Solovyov's comments in fact suggest that Russia may not go to the moon until well after the Artemis coalition arrives, should schedules hold.

"It is clear to us that before sending cosmonauts to the moon, we must decide on the need for this serious and very expensive step," Solovyov said.

The new Russian space station will also represent a different "philosophy" of human spaceflight, Solovyov said, claiming that Russian science on the ISS and, previously, on the Soviet/Russian space station Mir, has not delivered a great return.

"It's no secret that for various reasons things are not going very well with our space experiments on the ISS, and the results on Mir were not very high either," he said in the interview, which was published while the ISS partners were participating in the three-day ISS R&D Conference (opens in new tab) that concludes Thursday (July 28).

Solovyov said that financing and the International Space Station's fixed orientation "is not always convenient for a number of experiments on observing the Earth and space." He also said certain high-energy experiments in materials science, for example, cannot be performed due to a "lack of available energy resources."

How the new space station would overcome these issues is not clear, but one large takeaway from the newly published interview is that Roscosmos would prefer that humans only make occasional excursions to the new complex.

"To water, feed, clothe, provide oxygen and water to the crew is quite expensive. In addition, flights partially outside the Earth's magnetosphere increase the radiation dose to astronauts, which somewhat reduces the allowable duration of flights," Solovyov said.

Cosmonauts will likely be tasked with visiting ROSS for just a couple of months during the year to help Russian scientists with their experiments, which Solovyov said would include cosmic ray physics, space technology and space materials science (including nanotechnologies). They also may test out robots and look at auroras.

Looking ahead, Solovyov suggested that ROSS might be used as a way station to help cosmonauts prepare for journeys to the moon or Mars, but he did not suggest a timeline for those deep-space journeys.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab) . Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) and on (opens in new tab).

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Russia wants to build its own space station, as early as 2028

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(Image credit: Roscosmos) Russia has its eyes on a space station of its own. The nation announced this week that it intends to pull out of the International Space Station (ISS) consortium after 2024. The timing of that move is uncertain, but Russia wants it to dovetail with the readiness of the planned Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS).

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China’s new space station opens for business in an increasingly competitive era of space activity

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China has completed construction of the Tiangong space station, and science projects are now underway. The station is an important piece of China’s ambitious plans for space activity in coming years.

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Soon after the landing, upon checking and finding the spacecraft in good condition, Mr. Armstrong and Colonel Aldrin made their decision to open the hatch and get out earlier than originally scheduled. The flight plan had called for the moon walk to begin at 2:12 A.M.

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NASA's decision to award SpaceX a contract to design the lander that will carry the first American astronauts to the moon since 1972 touched off what has become open warfare between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. This illustration shows SpaceX's Starship human lander on the moon. (SpaceX/NASA/Associated Press)

For years, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have sparred over the performance of their rockets and space companies in a simmering feud that flared during a fight over who could use a NASA launchpad and which company was the first to successfully land a rocket.
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But now the two billionaires, among the world's richest men, are waging an increasingly bitter battle that pits two enormous business empires in clashes that are playing out in the courts, the Federal Communications Commission and the halls of Congress in what's become one of the greatest business rivalries in a generation.

What began as a fight between Musk's SpaceX and Bezos's Blue Origin space companyover a major NASA contract to land astronauts on the moon now also encompasses a race to build an Internet satellite service in space.

That fight has become especially bare-knuckled and personal. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

For the past couple of years, SpaceX has been launching a constellation of satellites that could reach well into the thousands, intended to beam Internet signals to Earth. Amazon has a similar plan with a program it calls Kuiper, which has yet to launch a satellite.

On Aug. 25, Amazon challenged a SpaceX application to the FCC to modify its plan, saying the modification would violate the FCC's rules. Six days later, SpaceX responded. It didn't mince words.

Openly dismissive of Amazon's technical ability, SpaceX accused the company of trying to delay SpaceX's efforts to make up for its own failures. Amazon's track record, SpaceX said, "amply demonstrates that as it falls behind competitors, it is more than willing to use regulatory and legal processes to create obstacles designed to delay those competitors from leaving Amazon even further behind."

On Wednesday, Amazon fired back, accusing Musk of openly defying lawful regulations time and again. "The conduct of SpaceX and other Musk-led companies makes their view plain: rules are for other people, and those who insist upon or even simply request compliance are deserving of derision and ad hominem attacks," Amazon said in its filing with the agency.

On Thursday, SpaceX filed anew. "Another week, another objection from Amazon against a competitor, yet still no sign of progress on Amazon's own long-rumored satellite system," its letter to the FCC began.

The first ever launch into Earth's orbit with only civilians aboard is expected to take off on Sept. 15, led by e-commerce chief executive Jared Isaacman. (Video: Reuters)

For decades, American enterprise has been built on fierce competition between titans of industry, from the days of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller more than a century ago. Now Musk and Bezos are writing a new chapter focused on space - a sector romanticized by popular culture and nostalgia for the 1960s Apollo era but that has emerged in recent years as one of the most exciting industries with the potential for enormous growth.

Both Bezos and Musk portray their space ambitions as a way to help humanity - by creating a city on Mars, as Musk would like, or building colonies in Earth's orbit, as Bezos envisions. But space is also a huge business opportunity, said Margaret O'Mara, a professor at the University of Washington and author of "The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America," a history of the technology era.

"They're not public servants, they're businesspeople," she said. "Space is a passion for both of these billionaires, but it also is a growing industry and there is a lot of money to be made in it."

The companies are well aware that their rivalry is playing out in real time, over social media, in an era when Silicon Valley executives are often watched as closely as Hollywood actors. They are competing against a backdrop that has given rise to the "celebrity-driven business leader," O'Mara said, and Musk in particular has been adept at "creating a very loyal fan base" with a Twitter following of nearly 60 million and an appearance this year on "Saturday Night Live."

Hosting Saturday Night Live on May 8, Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk poked fun at himself in an episode airing on the eve of Mother's Day. (Video: Joshua Carroll/The Washington Post)

"It's a reflection of the moment we're in with this incredible power that rests with this handful of extraordinarily rich people," she said.

For all their differences, Musk and Bezos have charted similar paths in building their empires. Both possess a preternatural ability to upend entire industries with innovative new products, an ability to see deep into the future and the fortitude to stay true to their beliefs, defying doubters and shrugging off short-term losses for long-term gains.

At PayPal, Musk helped disrupt the credit card industry and transform how American consumers pay for goods and services. At Tesla, he has taken on the entire automobile industry and revolutionized the electric car market. SpaceX fought the military-industrial complex that for decades had dominated space and has become NASA's preferred launch partner.

With Amazon, Bezos first upended traditional bookstores, then all of retail as he turned the company into a behemoth "everything store." And Amazon Web Services changed the way companies store their data.

Now, in the second act of their illustrious careers, Musk and Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon CEO in July but remains its executive chairman, are bound together over a series of ventures that could define their legacies.

For now, Musk is well ahead in virtually every area.

SpaceX has dispatched three teams of astronauts to the International Space Station and on Tuesday is scheduled to launch a crew of civilian astronauts on a three-day trip orbiting Earth. Blue Origin has launched a single suborbital mission to space that lasted just over 10 minutes.

SpaceX already has launched nearly 2,000 Starlink satellites to orbit, bringing the company close to pulling off Musk's riskiest and most daring venture: providing Internet service from space. Recently, Musk wrote on Twitter that his company has shipped 100,000 ground terminals for the system and is serving 14 countries. Last year, the FCC announced it was awarding SpaceX $886 million to help serve hundreds of thousands of customers in the United States, part of a $9.2 billion effort to increase broadband access.

Amazon has its own plan to flood Earth orbit with satellites that would beam the Internet to the ground. But it has yet to launch a single satellite.

The modification SpaceX want to make to its FCC license and that Amazon is now challenging would add some 30,000 satellites in two configurations. One would be launched on its next-generation Starship rocket; the other would be flown on its workhorse Falcon 9.

Amazon argues that under the FCC regulations, SpaceX must present a single design for its system. It argues that the two configurations "arranges these satellites along very different orbital parameters. SpaceX's novel approach of applying for two mutually exclusive configurations is at odds with both the Commission's rules and public policy."

SpaceX called that a "delay tactic" and said it was "a continuation of efforts by the Amazon family of companies to hinder competitors to compensate for Amazon's failure to make progress of its own."

On Twitter, Musk took that a step further, misspelling Bezos's name and writing that it "turns out Besos retired to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX."

Amazon's scathing response Wednesday took aim at SpaceX and Musk himself, pointing to a list of transgressions that Amazon argued showed a pattern of behavior that should make regulators leery.

It noted that SpaceX launched a Starship prototype without approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and that it kept its Tesla assembly plant open during the coronavirus pandemic in defiance of local health officials.

"In SpaceX's playbook, there is no need to grapple with rules - those apply only to others," the Amazon filing concluded.

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment on Amazon's filing, though it did send a letter to the FCC.

In addition to the fight over the satellite constellations, Bezos, through Blue Origin, is also waging war over the contract NASA awarded to SpaceX to build a spacecraft capable of flying astronauts to and from the surface of the moon. Blue Origin appealed NASA's decision to the Government Accountability Office, which rejected Blue Origin's arguments and ruled in NASA's favor.

Then, Blue Origin filed suit in the Court of Federal Claims, arguing that NASA erred in its award. It also has sent papers taunting SpaceX to Capitol Hill staffers, saying, "What is Elon Musk afraid of ... a little competition?"

The company is arguing that NASA allowed SpaceX to waive many of its flight readiness reviews - meetings designed to ensure mission success. That means SpaceX's proposal was not in compliance with NASA's solicitation, Megan Mitchell, Blue Origin's vice president of government relations, said in an interview. She added that it also raised "a pretty big safety issue, " especially because SpaceX would need multiple launches to refuel its rocket in orbit to reach the moon.

"The idea that you would take an entirely new architecture with all new technologies like on orbit refueling and fuel depots and say, no, we're going to eliminate it ... that is essentially a waiver of the material requirement that NASA put in the solicitation originally," she said.

Tying up the procurement in litigation has had consequences. NASA was prohibited from working on the contract while the GAO reviewed the case, and the space agency has agreed that it will also discontinue work until Nov. 1 while the federal court case continues. That could further delay NASA's signature human spaceflight program that recently had a kind of momentum not seen in years.

The suits have also angered SpaceX, which in a memo to Capitol Hill staffers pointed out that Blue Origin "has not produced a single rocket or spacecraft capable of reaching orbit." Musk crudely amplified the point on Twitter, writing the company "can't get it up (to orbit)."

He also tweeted an photo of a deflated mock-up of Blue Origin's lunar lander that he captioned, "somehow this wasn't convincing."

In a statement to The Post in April, Musk pointed out that Blue Origin's bid was $6 billion, more than twice what SpaceX had bid.

"The BO bid was just way too high. Double that of SpaceX and SpaceX has much more hardware progress." He added that Bezos should be more involved in Blue Origin. "I think he needs to run BO full-time for it to be successful. Frankly, I hope he does."

The fight signifies how companies have taken the place of nations in the battle for space primacy. SpaceX, Amazon and Blue Origin are reprising the roles of the United States and the Soviet Union at the dawn of the Space Age. That rivalry drove NASA to put astronauts on the moon. This one could, too, once it gets out of court.

But it also shows how space has become just like any other business, and the fight to orbit is like any other coldblooded capitalist slugfest, whether it be Coke and Pepsi, Avis and Hertz, or Microsoft and Apple.

"It reflects the movement of the space sector from something special to, well, like everything else," said John Logsdon, professor emeritus of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute. "Where people compete, companies compete. It's like the KFC ad where Colonel Sanders says McDonald's making a chicken sandwich is none of their business."

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Elon Musk is dominating the space race. Jeff Bezos is trying to fight back.

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For years, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have sparred over the performance of their rockets and space companies in a simmering feud that flared during a fight over who could use a NASA launchpad and which company was the first to successfully land a rocket. Tech is not your friend.

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Billionaire Richard Branson floats in zero gravity on board Virgin Galactic's passenger rocket plane VSS Unity on July 11. (Virgin Galactic/Via Reuters)

On Sunday, Richard Branson became the first billionaire in space. In the video promoting the trip, joy is evident on his face as he unbuckles his safety harness and floats free from gravity. Back on Earth, reactions were ... less enthusiastic.
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Quibblers argued that the short suborbital flight didn't really count as being "in space." Pundits lamented that Branson is damaging the environment with unnecessary emissions and wasting resources that could have gone to Earth's needier billions - a complaint they extend to Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Post who is set to take his own private space flight later this month. Author Sim Kern pointed out just how difficult it is to keep someone alive in space for any length of time: " I don't know if they realize the futility ... Or if being a billionaire makes you so delusional that they really think they can buy a Mars colony in their lifetimes."

I'll pause to note that the few billionaires I've met in my professional life have demonstrated a better-than-average familiarity with reality. They also tend to have a better-than-average familiarity with how innovation works. So they probably understand what their critics clearly don't: how even a fleeting roller-coaster ride into the Earth's thermosphere can be an enduring contribution to humanity.

True, at this moment, space flight is not very useful. As Kern points out, space wants to kill you, so certainly substantial time keeping one person alive and functioning in space requires a team of round-the-clock specialists groundside, a huge amount of money and some of the most impressive engineering feats in human history, from rocket design to space toilets. In exchange, we mostly get - a person in space. And Branson's Virgin Galactic and Bezos's Blue Origin will be sending people up for minutes, not days.
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But one could say the same thing about virtually everything humanity has done since we left our fellow apes behind. History is littered with explorers and colonies that failed, the experimental technologies that blew up in the faces of their inventors - metaphorically or literally.

Every human alive today is the unlikely heir of adventurers who were willing to dare despite the odds. And every new breakthrough, from fire onward, was undoubtedly deprecated by neighbors who considered the thing a pointless waste: Why mess around with flint, or try to take on a gazelle, when you could be digging for grubs or perhaps picking lice out of someone's hair?

Nor was this being exactly unreasonable: There's often a long gap between discovery and payoff. It took decades for automobiles or airplanes to become more than a rich man's toy or a publicity stunt. Likely substantial time elapsed between the first human attempt to transit the ocean and the establishment of regular shipping routes - and a whole lot of humans surely died along the way. Undoubtedly, their fellows on the shore complained that they were frittering away their lives (and a lot of perfectly good wood).

Space is even less hospitable to human life, of course, but our resources are also much greater than what our ancestors could muster. Government resources have been, and will continue to be, an important part of that story: Given the scale of the projects modern science is undertaking, it will be hard for humanity to advance without the kind of funding that only governments can muster. But that kind of spending can go even further in partnership with private institutions that bring their own unique strengths to the table.

The advantage of government space programs is a scale no private entity can match. The disadvantage of government space programs is that they are few in number, constrained by political considerations - such as: Is this key component built in an important congressional district? - and ultimately at the mercy of people who don't see why we should bother.

That's why what Branson and Bezos are doing matters immensely. They can't match NASA's budget, so they've had to settle for smaller ambitions. But even brief commercial flights mean that we won't lose space entirely if that handful of governments lose interest. And such flights are a great platform for the kind of incremental innovation that eventually transformed Orville and Wilbur Wright's motorized box kite into a Boeing 737, and Karl Benz's gasoline-powered tricycle into a sleek C-class.

That is the kind of innovation that private entities tend to do better than government - in no small part because private entities face more continuous competitive pressures to go a little farther, a little faster, a little more comfortably. If humanity is eventually going to the stars, that kind of innovation will be an essential part of how we'll get there. Even if, at the moment, most of us can't quite see it.
Read more: Eugene Robinson: Republicans refusing to get vaccinated are owning no one but themselves Jennifer Rubin: Why are White evangelicals embracing an anti-democratic movement? Because they're panicking. Greg Sargent: How Republicans hope to scam Democrats into committing political suicide

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Opinion | The billionaires' space race benefits the rest of us. Really.

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On Sunday, Richard Branson became the first billionaire in space. In the video promoting the trip, joy is evident on his face as he unbuckles his safety harness and floats free from gravity. Back on Earth, reactions were ... less enthusiastic.

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Space exploration is the ongoing discovery and exploration of celestial structures in outer space by means of continuously evolving and growing space technology. While the study of space is carried out mainly by astronomers with telescopes, the physical exploration of space is conducted both by unmanned robotic probes and human spaceflight.

While the observation of objects in space, known as astronomy, predates reliable recorded history, it was the development of large and relatively efficient rockets during the early 20th century that allowed physical space exploration to become a reality. Common rationales for exploring space include advancing scientific research, uniting different nations, ensuring the future survival of humanity and developing military and strategic advantages against other countries.

Space exploration has often been used as a proxy competition for geopolitical rivalries such as the Cold War. The early era of space exploration was driven by a "Space Race" between the Soviet Union and the United States, the launch of the first man-made object to orbit the Earth, the USSR's Sputnik 1, on 4 October 1957, and the first Moon landing by the American Apollo 11 craft on 20 July 1969 are often taken as landmarks for this initial period. The Soviet space program achieved many of the first milestones, including the first living being in orbit in 1957, the first human spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1) in 1961, the first spacewalk (by Aleksei Leonov) on 18 March 1965, the first automatic landing on another celestial body in 1966, and the launch of the first space station (Salyut 1) in 1971.

After the first 20 years of exploration, focus shifted from one-off flights to renewable hardware, such as the Space Shuttle program, and from competition to cooperation as with the International Space Station (ISS).

With the substantial completion of the ISS following STS-133 in March 2011, plans for space exploration by the USA remain in flux. Constellation, a Bush Administration program for a return to the Moon by 2020 was judged inadequately funded and unrealistic by an expert review panel reporting in 2009. The Obama Administration proposed a revision of Constellation in 2010 to focus on the development of the capability for crewed missions beyond low earth orbit (LEO), envisioning extending the operation of the ISS beyond 2020, transferring the development of launch vehicles for human crews from NASA to the private sector, and developing technology to enable missions to beyond LEO, such as Earth/Moon L1, the Moon, Earth/Sun L2, near-earth asteroids, and Phobos or Mars orbit. As of March 2011, the US Senate and House of Representatives are still working towards a compromise NASA funding bill, which will probably terminate Constellation and fund development of a heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV).

In the 2000s, the People's Republic of China initiated a successful manned spaceflight program, while the European Union, Japan, and India have also planned future manned space missions. China, Russia, Japan, and India have advocated manned missions to the Moon during the 21st century, while the European Union has advocated manned missions to both the Moon and Mars during the 21st century.

From the 1990s onwards, private interests began promoting space tourism and then private space exploration of the Moon (see Google Lunar X Prize).

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Space exploration is the ongoing discovery and exploration of celestial structures in outer space by means of continuously evolving and growing space technology. While the study of space is carried out mainly by astronomers with telescopes, the physical exploration of space is conducted both by unmanned robotic probes and human spaceflight.

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The way things are, the greater part of mankind is in one little container called "Earth". It is just a matter of time before something happens to our planet that is devastating to the point that it changes the course of life, as we know it. Whether is a natural catastrophe, as of a comet, or self-dispensed, as atomic war, it is conceivable that our home will never again be habitable. What happens, then, to the greater part of the achievements of the last thousand eras? The greater part of every invention, achievement, and most importantly people could be erased forever. Unless, obviously, there are a couple of people living somewhere else in the close planetary system. Space investigation and colonization of the Moon and Mars are a protection arrangement for humankind and the greater part of our accomplishments.However, we have to think seriously about that space investigation meets up with vital innovative changes. Overwhelming dependence on innovation triggers broad research that creates specialized learning that is connected not just in space investigation. Space investigation includes examination of physical conditions in space and on stars, planets, and their moons utilizing counterfeit satellites. Astronomy urges future eras to concentrate on what is past the

Space exploration brings together a lot of smart people from many different fields and arranges them to work on some very diverse issues. The result is not only extraordinary scientific discoveries, but also many useful inventions. From healthier food to technology to better diagnose breast cancer, to farther tires technology, NASA technology is all around you.
Earth whether for the sake of entertainment or exploratory disclosures. What 's more, it makes adequate mindfulness about what is around our
In a world confronted with such social emergencies as poverty and...show more content...

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The way things are, the greater part of mankind is in one little container called "Earth". It is just a matter of time before something happens to our planet that is devastating to the point that it changes the course of life, as we know it.

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Desperate to land a man on the moon before Russia does, NASA hastily preps a would-be spaceman for a mission that would leave him alone in a lunar shelter for a year.

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Space Exploration―A History in 100 Objects

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Noté /5: Achetez Space Exploration―A History in 100 Objects de Odenwald, Sten, Mather, John: ISBN: 9781615196142 sur amazon.fr, des millions de livres livrés chez vous en 1 jour

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Neil Armstrong's family and friends, many of whom have never spoken publicly before, tell the story of the first man to set foot on the moon. Drawing heavily on unbroadcast archive footage and the unique perspectives of the contributors, this is an exclusive account of Neil Armstrong's extraordinary life story.

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The space race was a 20th Century struggle between two nation-states, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US). The pursuit for both was the domination of space flight technologies. The competition began on 2 August 1955, when the Soviet Union responded to the US announcement of their similar intent to launch artificial satellites.

The space race has its origins in the nuclear arms race between the two nations following the Second World War. Both sides were aided by German missile technology and scientists from their missile programme. The technological advantages required for such power were seen as necessary for national security and political superiority. The space race produced groundbreaking efforts to launch artificial satellites; space probes of the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human space voyages in low Earth orbit and lunar missions.

The space race between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) was a remarkable time in history with many far-reaching achievements in science, space exploration, and technology. This timeline shows the twenty-year competition between the two nations.

Space race timeline

2 August 1955: The USSR responds to the US announcement that they intend to launch the first artificial satellite into space with a satellite of their own.

4 October 1957: The USSR successfully launches Sputnik 1, the first Earth-orbiting satellite in history.

3 November 1957: The USSR successfully launches Sputnik 2, carrying a dog named Laika into space. They become the first nation to successfully send a living organism into orbit.

31 January 1958: The US enter the space race by launching Explorer 1, the first US satellite to reach orbit. It carried experimental equipment that led to the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belt.

1 October 1958: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is created in the US, replacing the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA).

18 December 1958: The US launch SCORE, the world's first communications satellite. It captured world attention by broadcasting a pre-recorded Christmas message from US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, becoming the first broadcast of a human voice from space.

2 January 1959: The USSR launches Luna 1, known as the first "cosmic rocket" as it accidentally escaped the orbit of the Moon due to the object having too much speed. Luna 1 becomes the first human-made object to leave the orbit of the Earth and orbit the sun instead.

2 August 1959: The US launches Explorer 6, the world's first weather satellite and obtains the first pictures of Earth from space.

12 September 1959: The USSR launches Luna 2 and accomplishes its mission of creating the first spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon.

4 October 1959: The USSR launches Luna 3 and succeeds in their mission of sending an object into orbit around the Moon and photographing the far side of the Moon.

19 August 1960: Aboard the Soviet Union's Sputnik 5, the first animals (two dogs, Belka and Strelka) and a range of plants are returned alive from space.

31 January 1961: Ham, a US chimpanzee, becomes the first hominid (or great ape) in space and the first to successfully survive the landing.

12 April 1961: The Soviet Union achieve a clear triumph in the space race. Aboard the Vostok 1, Yuri Gagarin makes a single orbit around the Earth and becomes the first man to reach space. He remained in space for one hour and forty-eight minutes before landing in Saratov Oblast, west Russia.

5 May 1961: The US achieve the first pilot-controlled journey and first American in space with Alan Shepard aboard the Mercury-Redstone 3 (or Freedom 7) spacecraft. On this flight, Shepard did not orbit Earth. He flew 116 miles high. The flight lasted about 15 minutes.

16 June 1963: Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first civilian and first woman in space. She spends almost three days in space, orbiting the Earth 48 times aboard her spacecraft, Vostok 6.

18 March 1965: Alexei Leonov leaves his spacecraft, the Voskhod 2, in a specialized spacesuit and conducts a twelve-minute spacewalk, the first of its kind.

14 July 1965: The US satellite, Mariner 4, performs the first successful voyage to the planet Mars, returning the first close-up images of the Martian surface.

1967: This year proves the most deadly of the space race for both the US and Soviet Union. In January, American astronauts Ed White, Gus Grissom, and Roger Chaffee die when a fire ignited in their Apollo 1 capsule on the launch pad. Only a few months later the Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is also killed when the parachute on his Soyuz 1 capsule fails to open on his reentry into Earth's atmosphere.

21 December 1968: US spacecraft Apollo 8 becomes the first human-crewed spacecraft to reach the Moon, orbit it, and successfully return to Earth.

20 July 1969: Neil Armstrong and later Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin become the first men to walk on the Moon while their crewmate Michael Collins continues to orbit the Moon aboard the Apollo 11. This secured a victory for America in the space race with a televised landing witnessed around the world by 723 million people.
Find out more about Apollo 11
11 April 1970: The US Apollo 13 mission is known as the first explosion onboard a spacecraft where the crew survived.

19 April 1971: The USSR launches the first space station. Parts of this spacecraft will become core segments of the International Space Station (ISS) almost thirty years later in November 2000.

1 August 1971: David Scott, commander of the Apollo 15 mission, becomes the first person to drive on the Moon. He's also remembered for paying tribute to the Soviet Union and US astronauts who died in the advancement of space exploration. When walking on the Moon, Scott places a plaque with a list of the dead. Alongside this, he leaves a small aluminium sculpture of an astronaut in a spacesuit, created by Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonck.

15 July 1975: With tensions between the US and USSR softening, the first cooperative Apollo-Soyuz mission is launched. With two separate flights, the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft dock in space and the two commanders Tom Stafford and Alexei Leonov exchange the first international handshake. This act can be seen to symbolically end the space race, paving the way for future joint missions, such as the International Space Station and the Shuttle-Mir programme.

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Explore and learn about the key events and achievements that shaped almost twenty years of competition between the United States and the Soviet Union

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(Image credit: Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel to space on June 16, 1963, when she orbited Earth as part of the Vostok 6 mission.

Tereshkova spent almost three days in space during her solo mission.

She remains the youngest woman to fly to space, the only female astronaut or cosmonaut to make a solo space journey, and the first civilian to journey to space.

Following her one and only space mission, Tereshkova has received a number of prestigious medals and has held many political positions, according to the Royal Museum of Greenwich. She has also toured the world as an advocate for Soviet science.

Related: 20 trailblazing women in astronomy and astrophysics

Early life and joining the Soviet Space Program

Four of the candidates passed examinations in Nov. 1962 and were commissioned as lieutenants in the Soviet Air Force. This was just an honorary rank which means Tereshkova was a civilian when she journeyed to space.

The Soviet Union initially intended to launch two woman cosmonauts into space in late 1962, but the missions were delayed. In March 1963, it was decided that male cosmonaut, Valeri Bykovsky would fly Vostok 5, a separate spacecraft but part of the same dual flight mission as the Vostok 6 capsule, which would be crewed by Tereshkova. Her radio call sign on the mission would be 'Chaika' or 'seagull.'

The Vostok 6 mission

(Image credit: © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Vostok 5 and Bykovsky launched ahead of Vostok 6 on June 14, 1963, with Tereshkova watching on as she made final preparations for the launch of Vostok 6. Vostok 6 would blast off two days later on June 16, 1963, from Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Vostok 6 was guided by an automatic control system, so Tereshkova never actually took control of the craft during the flight. Though Vostok 5 and 6 had different orbits, they came within around 3 miles of each other during their respective flights. This allowed Tereshkova and Bykovsky to communicate briefly with each other before they drifted apart again.

The Vostok 6 mission lasted 71 hours and 12 minutes, just 48 minutes short of three days. At the time, that was longer than the combined flight time of every U.S. Mercury astronaut. During those three days in space, Tereshkova made 48 orbits of Earth.

On June 19, 1963, Vostok 6 re-entered Earth's atmosphere, and Tereshkova ejected at an altitude of 20,000 feet and parachuted safely back to Earth. Vostok 5 would safely return to Earth just a few hours later.

After space: Personal life and politics

Following her return to Earth, Tereshkova was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Hero of the Soviet Union awards. In Nov. 1963, she married fellow cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev, the pair had a daughter in 1964.

Together Tereshkova and Nikolayev made various trips abroad to promote goodwill and Soviet science. They separated in 1979, but their divorce was only formalized in 1982 as it required the personal permission of Soviet Premier Brezhnev.

During reviews to return to space in 1978, Tereshkova met a military medical physician called Yuliy Shaposhnikov. Following her separation from Nikolayev, Tereshkova, and Shaposhnikov lived together for 20 years until his death in 1999.

Before the fall of the Soviet Union, Tereshkova was a prominent member of the Communist Party and represented the Soviet government at a number of meetings of international women's organizations, including acting as Soviet representative to the UN Conference for the International Women's Year in Mexico City in 1975. She would be recognized internationally with the United Nations Gold Medal of Peace, the Simba International Women's Movement Award, and the Joliot-Curie Gold Medal.

Tereshkova became a member of the World Peace Council in 1966. She served as a member of the Yaroslavl Supreme Soviet in 1967 and as a member of the council of the Union of the Supreme Soviet from 1966 to 1970 and then again from 1970 to 1974 when Tereshkova was elected to the presidium of the Supreme Soviet. she earned a doctorate in aeronautical engineering.

During the 1980s, Tereshkova acted as Deputy to the Supreme Soviet and was Vice President of the International Women's Federation, as well as holding a number of other international positions. Tereshkova remained active in politics after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Her last political position to date was as Deputy Chair for the Committee for International Affairs in 2021.

Valentina Tereshkova FAQs

How old was Valentina Tereshkova when she went to space?

What are three interesting facts about Valentina Tereshkova?
"A bird cannot fly with one wing only. Human spaceflight cannot develop any further without the active participation of women." "If women can be railroad workers in Russia, why can't they fly in space?" "Once you've been in space, you appreciate how small and fragile the Earth is." "Anyone who has spent any time in space will love it for the rest of their lives. I achieved my childhood dream of the sky." "They forbade me from flying, despite all my protests and arguments. After being once in space, I was keen to go back there. But it didn't happen."
What happened to Valentina Tereshkova after the mission to space?

Famous quotes

Additional resources

Read more about the Vostok 6 spacecraft that carried Tereshkova to space in these NASA resources. The often strange story of the Soviet Space Program is told here in this YouTube video. The first U.S. woman to make it to space was Sally Ride. You can read more about her and her mission courtesy of NASA.

Bibliography

Valentina Tereshkova and Sally Ride - Women Space Pioneers, NASA, [Accessed 06/10/23], [https://www.nasa.gov/mediacast/valentina-tereshkova-and-sally-ride-women-space-pioneers]

Who was the first woman in space? Royal Observatory Greenwich, [Accessed 06/10/23], [https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/who-was-first-woman-space]

First woman in space: Valentina, ESA [Accessed 06/10/23], [https://www.esa.int/About_Us/ESA_history/50_years_of_humans_in_space/First_woman_in_space_Valentina]

Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space, History. Com. [Accessed 06/10/23], [https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-woman-in-space]

Valentina Tereshkova, Britannica, [Accessed 06/10/23], [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Valentina-Tereshkova]

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Valentina Tereshkova: First Woman in Space

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In 1963 Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to journey to space orbiting Earth in the Vostok 6 space capsule.

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The first woman in space has revealed that the Soviet authorities thought it was "too dangerous" to send more female cosmonauts into orbit.

Valentina Tereshkova told BBC News that she protested, writing a letter to the central communist party committee.

It took the authorities 19 years to send another woman into space.

Ms Tereshkova was speaking at the launch of an exhibition about the Soviet space programme at the Science Museum.

She told me: "On Earth, men and women are taking the same risks. Why shouldn't we be taking the same risks in space?"

"We had been preparing for another female flight but it was (the head of the space programme) Sergei Korolev's decision not to risk women's lives because one of the women in the space corps already had a family."

I asked her whether she and the five other trained female cosmonauts disagreed with the decision.

"We were against that decision," she told me firmly. "We wrote to the central party committee disagreeing with the decision."

But history shows it was to no avail. The Soviet Union did not send another woman into space for 19 years, Svetlana Savitskaya, who became the first woman to fly on the Soviet Space station Salyut 7.

There is speculation that she was sent into space because the USSR was aware that the US was preparing to send their first woman into space - Sally Ride.

The revelation is at odds with what the Soviet leader at the time, Nikita Khrushchev, said in a speech at Red Square whilst standing beside Valentina Tereshkova on her return from space.

In it, he mocked the US for its sexual discrimination.

"The bourgeoisie always claim that women are the weaker sex. Now here you can see a typical Soviet woman who in the eyes of the bourgeoisie is weak," he said.

"Look at what she has shown to America's astronauts. She has shown them who is who!"

For Premier Khrushchev, Ms Tereshkova's flight was intended to be a clear signal of equal rights for women under his communist regime.

While in space, Ms Tereshkova spoke directly with Khrushchev, reporting that "all systems are working perfectly" and that she felt "excellent".

He replied: "Valentina, I am very happy and proud that a girl from the Soviet Union is the first woman to fly into space and to operate such cutting-edge equipment".

Ms Tereshkova became the first woman to go into space on 16 June 1963. She completed 48 orbits of the Earth in a trip that lasted almost three days.

Her call signal was "Seagull", and she shouted this joyful message as her Vostok-6 Spacecraft blasted off: "Hey sky, take off your hat, I'm on my way!"

It was at the height of the space race between the US and the Soviet Union. Each country had sent up six astronauts each in an effort to demonstrate national superiority to the rest of the world.

Fifty-two years later, Valentina Tereshkova's capsule is on display at the Science Museum, in an exhibition about the Soviet era of space exploration in the 1960s.

At the opening of the exhibition, she gazed at it lovingly and said she would miss it while it is on display in London - away from the astronaut training facility in Star City near Moscow.

"I reunite with it every day. I never stopped reuniting with this module. Not for a minute, not for an hour, not for a day," she said.

"Every time I meet it, I stroke it and say 'hello my darling' and then go back to work."

In the West, Valentina Tereshkova is one of the forgotten heroes of the space age. At first glorified and portrayed as a symbol of the social enlightenment that communism offered, and then left behind in the great era of Soviet space exploration.

For her own part, she is modest about her own achievement.

"One cannot deny the great role women have played in the world community. My flight was yet another impetus to continue this female contribution," she told me at the Science Museum.

And she issued a message to young women who wanted to follow in her footsteps: "Work hard and you will get there. I am very jealous of you!"

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Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age opens to the public at the Science Museum tomorrow

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The first woman in space has revealed that the Soviet authorities thought it was "too dangerous" to send more female cosmonauts into orbit. Valentina Tereshkova told BBC News that she protested, writing a letter to the central communist party committee. It took the authorities 19 years to send another woman into space.

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(Image credit: Blue Origin)

Since the Apollo lunar lander first delivered humans to the moon, just 12 astronauts have walked on the lunar surface. While nobody has set foot on its surface since 1972, plans are in place to return people to the moon. Some people, including American Entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, are envisaging steps much further ahead- creating a human colony on the moon (opens in new tab).

In order to increase our knowledge of the moon and carry out experiments on its surface, people and machinery need to be delivered there by lunar landers. One of these currently being developed is the Blue Moon lander, created by the privately funded aerospace manufacturer, Blue Origin. The company, which also focuses on space tourism, is owned by Jeff Bezos. The Blue Moon wasn't selected for NASA's Artemis missions, but Blue Origin hopes to use the moon lander in future missions and achieve sustained human presence in space, according to their website (opens in new tab).

Related: Blue Origin loses federal lawsuit over NASA moon lander contract

Lunar lander technology

The Blue Moon lander, which began development work in 2016, uses autonomous technology to land with precision. Equipped with LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) sensors, Blue Origin claims that it is guaranteed to land within 23 metres of the pre-planned landing spot. To scan the moon, laser beams are fired at its surface to create a computerized image of the terrain. This prevents the lander from descending onto hazards and allows the flattest nearby surface to be chosen.

When in lunar orbit, the lander can release micro-satellites into space. Then, once on the moon, the lander will release other apparatus such as rovers from its top deck. The equipment that is attached to the lander can be altered based on specific missions. For those requiring human presence - and to return equipment and lunar samples to Earth - an ascent module can be added. This launches from the lunar lander to travel back to Earth.

Blue Moon anatomy

Refuelling in space

The Blue Moon lander uses liquid hydrogen as fuel. This propellant was chosen with future possibilities in mind. Scientists now know that there is water ice on the moon, from which hydrogen can be extracted. By choosing these elements to power the lander, Bezos hopes that one day the spacecraft can be refuelled in space (opens in new tab), using the moon's resources. When separating water into its elements, oxygen is also released which can be used in breathing apparatus.

Additional resources

You can keep up with the latest news (opens in new tab) from Blue Origin on their website and if you want to learn more about the Blue Moon lunar lander check out this informative video (opens in new tab) from Blue Origin. Want to know more about why we are going back to the moon? NASA explains (opens in new tab) with this article on the Artemis mission.
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

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Blue Moon lunar lander: Facts about Jeff Bezos' spacecraft

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(Image credit: Blue Origin) Since the Apollo lunar lander first delivered humans to the moon, just 12 astronauts have walked on the lunar surface. While nobody has set foot on its surface since 1972, plans are in place to return people to the moon.

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NASA.gov brings you the latest images, videos and news from America’s space agency. Get the latest updates on NASA missions, watch NASA TV live, and learn about our quest to reveal the unknown and benefit all humankind.

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Fifty years after Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins blasted off for the moon, a new space race is on. It is one that may affect the future of humanity even more than its Cold War predecessor, both on earth and in the wider cosmos.

As it celebrates Apollo 11's moon mission, NASA finds itself in the midst of a major shake-up - the result of the Trump administration's pledge to return humans to the moon by what he hopes will be his final presidential year of 2024. That would be well in advance of China's stated intention of conducting its own manned landing in the 2030s, and it would be no surprise if the new U.S. 2024 target prompts a similar shake-up in China's space program.

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi - like Trump another assertive nationalist - India this year aims to be the fourth nation to send an automated probe to the lunar surface. The Chandrayaan 2 blasted off on Monday, a week after the mission was aborted due to a technical problem.

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The new moon race could define our future

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Fifty years after Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins blasted off for the moon, a new space race is on. It is one that may affect the future of humanity even more than its Cold War predecessor, both on earth and in the wider cosmos.