Footnote 8 Pakistan may cooperate with China in extending the Belt-and-Road Initiative upwards into a space corridor. Footnote 7 The UAE seeks interagency cooperation to support ecosystems for astronauts, planetary probes, and off-world habitats. Footnote 5 Others have capitalized on expertise in a technology, such as Israel with small satellites, Footnote 6 or staked out regulatory niches, such as Luxembourg on space resources. Many of these states have unilaterally created space agencies. The contemporary difference is the emergence of lesser-known states intent on capturing industrial benefits, Footnote 4 ranging from independent space powers like Japan, China, and India, to entrants such as Australia, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Israel, Pakistan, Turkey, and South Africa, to name a few. The United States, Russia, and Europe remain important. Footnote 3 For the foreseeable future, states will remain central to the international space saga, often as backers and consumers of space technologies and products, prime architects of strategies and policies, and designers of governance frameworks. Footnote 1 Democratization Footnote 2 does not, however, mean that states themselves are displaced. Space flight became a real possibility and kids around the country and the globe could begin taking their own fantasy flights.The first trend, democratization, means space activities are expanding to a growing number of states and nonstate actors, distinguishing this space age from one when two powers-the United States and the Soviet Union-were dominant. On July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to walk on another planetary body.Ĭheck out the moon missions at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Putting a man on the moon became an official governmental priority. In addition, we began to realize that there was a new frontier to be explored. Students began to get more math and science courses. Governments put in more money, and the educational system responded. Shortly after Sputnik, lawmakers and the public began calling for a greater emphasis on math and science in the nation’s schools. The long term effects of the space race on Nebraska and other regions of the country came in the way the space race changed the educational system and the imaginations of our people. Soon, they developed the rockets, built the space capsules and satellites and hired astronauts to become space men. NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was created in 1958 to bring competing military space programs into one effort. But our first attempts at catching up ended in spectacular explosions. The 'space race' between the Soviet Union and the United States was on. political leaders did know was that if the Soviet Union had rockets powerful enough to launch a satellite, they had rockets powerful enough to launch atomic bombs on the U.S. At the time, no one knew what it was capable of doing.

All of a sudden, there was an 'enemy satellite' streaking across the sky over the U.S. and around the world was astonishment and some measure of fear. You can hear that pattern by clicking the play button at right. And it broadcast a 'beep-beep' pattern of signals that could be picked up by amateur radio operators around the world. Sputnik was polished so it would reflect light that could be seen with the naked eye even from 175 miles up in the sky. Russian engineers wanted to make sure that people around the globe could both see and hear it. It was a shiny steel sphere about 23 inches across with four antennas trailing behind it. Sputnik was actually no larger than a beach ball and sent meaningless signals back to earth, but it had a profound effect on the thinking of citizens and governments around the globe. In October, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite - named Sputnik - to be hurled into orbit around the Earth.

The fall and decline of race into space