The Space Race
The Space Race was a competition for two of the world's great powers, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R, to be able to maintain a human presence on the moon and the atmosphere. A communist Soviet Union and a democratic, capitalist United States led both countries to have high tensions against the other. On October 4,1957, the Soviets launched an R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile nicknamed Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite and the first man-made object placed into Earth's orbit. This worried the Americans due to the capability of the missile to deliver nuclear warheads into U.S. air space. Later, in 1958, the U.S. launched Explorer I and thus started the Space Race between the two countries.