In purely technological terms, the USSR trumped the USA. Sputnik and Gagarin were followed by a series of other firsts: the first woman in space, first lunar impact, first image of the dark side of the moon, first space rover and first space station were all claimed by the Soviets. But in the popular imagination, the Space Race was won when the USA put a man on the moon in 1969.
Three years later, tensions between the two superpowers briefly eased. And three years after that, in 1975, the world watched as an American Apollo module docket with a Soviet Soyuz last capsule. The two commanders shook hands in space. The Space Race was over.
Surviving propaganda posters are a potent reminder of the stratospheric ambitions of the Soviet regime during the Space Race.
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I researched that in the 6th grade, tracing it's timeline as far back as 1957, with the launch of Sputnik and it's canine "test pilot" Laika, followed by the launch of the Vostok capsule piloted by Yuri Gagarin in 1961. That same year, the Americans sent their own non-human "test pilot," a chimpanzee named Ham, launched in the Redstone rocket, followed by astronauts, Alan Shepard and John Glenn, respectively. Then, in 1969, came the famous Apollo 11 mission to land on the moon, consisting of a three-man astronaut team. launched in the Saturn V rocket. The three men were Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, and Michael Collins. There was also the "successful failure" known as Apollo 13 in 1970. Successful in launch and re-entry, but a failure to land on the moon due to technical problems. The end of the 1970's and the start of the 1980's was for the Americans, the beginning of the Shuttle age, starting with the Colombia and followed by the Challenger, Endeavour, Atlantis, and the Discovery. Key milestones of the Shuttle age of space exploration included the first American woman astronaut, Sally Ride, the ill-fated Challenger launch of 1986 the Hubble Telescope being put into orbit in the mid 1990's. And the rest, as they say... Is history.
