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136-590: The International Space Station (ISS) External Active Thermal Control System (EATCS) maintains an equilibrium when the ISS environment or heat loads exceed the capabilities of the Passive Thermal Control System (PTCS). Note Elements of the PTCS are external surface materials, insulation such as Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI), or Heat Pipes . The EATCS provides heat rejection capabilities for all

272-572: A Proton rocket on 20 November 1998. Zarya provided propulsion, attitude control , communications, and electrical power. Two weeks later on 4 December 1998, the American-made Unity was ferried aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-88 and joined with Zarya . Unity provided the connection between the Russian and US segments of the station and would provide ports to connect future modules and visiting spacecraft. While

408-615: A ballistic re-entry capsule launched on a derivative Atlas missile , and selecting a group of nine candidate pilots. After NASA's creation, the program was transferred over to the civilian agency's Space Task Group and renamed Project Mercury on November 26, 1958. The Mercury spacecraft was designed by the STG's chief engineer Maxime Faget . NASA selected a new group of astronaut (from the Greek for "star sailor") candidates from Navy , Air Force and Marine test pilots, and narrowed this down to

544-641: A virtual reality exhibit called The Infinite featuring life aboard the ISS was announced. The International Space Station is a product of global collaboration, with its components manufactured across the world. The modules of the Russian Orbital Segment , including Zarya and Zvezda , were produced at the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center in Moscow. Zvezda was initially manufactured in 1985 as

680-475: A "shorter version" of MARS-500 may be carried out on the ISS. In 2009, noting the value of the partnership framework itself, Sergey Krasnov wrote, "When compared with partners acting separately, partners developing complementary abilities and resources could give us much more assurance of the success and safety of space exploration. The ISS is helping further advance near-Earth space exploration and realisation of prospective programmes of research and exploration of

816-777: A component for the Mir-2 space station, which was never launched. Much of the US Orbital Segment , including the Destiny and Unity modules, the Integrated Truss Structure , and solar arrays , were built at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans . These components underwent final assembly and processing for launch at

952-677: A cooperative Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), resulting in the July 1975 rendezvous in Earth orbit of a US astronaut crew with a Soviet cosmonaut crew and joint development of an international docking standard APAS-75 . Being considered as the final act of the Space Race, the competition was only gradually replaced with cooperation. The collapse of the Soviet Union eventually allowed the US and

1088-554: A dozen Japanese universities conducted experiments in diverse fields. Cultural activities are another major objective of the ISS programme. Tetsuo Tanaka, the director of JAXA's Space Environment and Utilization Center, has said: "There is something about space that touches even people who are not interested in science." Amateur Radio on the ISS (ARISS) is a volunteer programme that encourages students worldwide to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, through amateur radio communications opportunities with

1224-489: A few minutes later. This "fellow traveler", as the name is translated in English, was a small, beeping ball, less than two feet in diameter and weighing less than 200 pounds. But the celebrations were muted at the launch control center until the down-range far east tracking station at Kamchatka received the first distinctive beep ... beep ... beep sounds from Sputnik 1 ' s radio transmitters, indicating that it

1360-531: A group of seven for the program. Capsule design and astronaut training began immediately, working toward preliminary suborbital flights on the Redstone missile , followed by orbital flights on the Atlas. Each flight series would first start unpiloted, then carry a non-human primate, then finally humans. The Mercury spacecraft's principal designer was Maxime Faget , who started research for human spaceflight during

1496-650: A lengthy interplanetary cruise, such as the six-month interval required to travel to Mars . Medical studies are conducted aboard the ISS on behalf of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI). Prominent among these is the Advanced Diagnostic Ultrasound in Microgravity study in which astronauts perform ultrasound scans under the guidance of remote experts. The study considers

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1632-481: A location in the relative safety of low Earth orbit to test spacecraft systems that will be required for long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars. This provides experience in operations, maintenance, and repair and replacement activities on-orbit. This will help develop essential skills in operating spacecraft farther from Earth, reduce mission risks, and advance the capabilities of interplanetary spacecraft. Referring to

1768-620: A micrometeorite gauge and a Geiger-Müller tube . It passed in and out of the Earth-encompassing radiation belt with its 194-by-1,368-nautical-mile (360 by 2,534 km) orbit, therefore saturating the tube's capacity and proving what Dr. James Van Allen , a space scientist at the University of Iowa , had theorized. The belt, named the Van Allen radiation belt , is a doughnut-shaped zone of high-level radiation intensity around

1904-554: A moment that America would be successful". On January 31, 1958, nearly four months after the launch of Sputnik 1 , von Braun and the United States successfully launched its first satellite on a four-stage Juno I rocket derived from the US Army's Redstone missile, at Cape Canaveral. The satellite Explorer 1 was 30.66 pounds (13.91 kg) in mass. The payload of Explorer 1 weighed 18.35 pounds (8.32 kg). It carried

2040-581: A mysterious barrier between the space program and the Soviet populace. The program's nature embodied ambiguous messages concerning its goals, successes, and values. The program itself was so secret that a regular Soviet citizen could never achieve a concrete image of it, but rather a superficial picture of its history, present activities, or future endeavors. Launchings were not announced until they took place. Cosmonaut names were not released until they flew. Mission details were sparse. Outside observers did not know

2176-758: A national hero of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, and a worldwide celebrity. Moscow and other cities in the USSR held mass demonstrations, the scale of which was second only to the World War II Victory Parade of 1945 . April 12 was declared Cosmonautics Day in the USSR, and is celebrated today in Russia as one of the official "Commemorative Dates of Russia." In 2011, it was declared the International Day of Human Space Flight by

2312-621: A second satellite was sent into orbit with augmented cosmic ray instruments. On April 2, 1958, President Eisenhower reacted to the Soviet space lead in launching the first satellite by recommending to the US Congress that a civilian agency be established to direct nonmilitary space activities. Congress, led by Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson , responded by passing the National Aeronautics and Space Act , which Eisenhower signed into law on July 29, 1958. This law turned

2448-555: A series of education guides, students develop a deeper understanding of the past and near-term future of crewed space flight, as well as that of Earth and life. In the JAXA "Seeds in Space" experiments, the mutation effects of spaceflight on plant seeds aboard the ISS are explored by growing sunflower seeds that have flown on the ISS for about nine months. In the first phase of Kibō utilisation from 2008 to mid-2010, researchers from more than

2584-445: A single, 108-minute orbit around the Earth in a craft called Vostok 1 . They dubbed Gagarin the first cosmonaut , roughly translated from Russian and Greek as "sailor of the universe". Gagarin's capsule was flown in automatic mode, since doctors did not know what would happen to a human in the weightlessness of space; but Gagarin was given an envelope containing the code that would unlock manual control in an emergency. Gagarin became

2720-754: A substantial upgrade in heat rejection capacity from the 14 kW capability of the Early External Active Thermal Control System (EEATCS) via the Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS), which was launched on STS-105 and installed onto the P6 Truss. There are two independent Loops (Loop A & Loop B) that combined make up the EATCS. The EATCS Loops perform three primary functions: International Space Station The International Space Station ( ISS )

2856-702: A successor to the R-1, the R-2 with an extended frame and a new engine designed by Glushko, which entered service in November, 1951, with a range of 600 kilometres (370 mi), twice that of the R-1. This was followed in 1951 with the development of the R-5 Pobeda , the Soviet Union's first real strategic missile, with a range of 1,200 km (750 mi) and capable of carrying a 1 megaton (mt) thermonuclear warhead. The R-5 entered service in 1955. Scientific versions of

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2992-536: A tabloid article about the " Mercury 13 " group of women wanting to become astronauts, and got the mistaken idea that NASA was actually entertaining this. Five months after her flight, Tereshkova married Vostok 3 cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev , and they had a daughter. The US Air Force had been developing a program to launch the first man in space, named Man in Space Soonest . This program studied several different types of one-man space vehicles, settling on

3128-519: A third set of arrays were delivered on STS-116 , STS-117 , and STS-118 . As a result of the major expansion of the station's power-generating capabilities, more modules could be accommodated, and the US Harmony module and Columbus European laboratory were added. These were soon followed by the first two components of the Japanese Kibō laboratory. In March 2009, STS-119 completed

3264-439: A three-person orbiter and two-person lander to the Moon. Kennedy's Moon landing goal was achieved in July 1969, with the flight of Apollo 11 . The conclusion of Apollo 11 is regarded by most as ending the Space Race with an American victory. This view is contested by some historians, whilst space historian Asif A. Siddiqi proposed a more balanced view. The USSR continued to pursue crewed lunar programs to launch and land on

3400-445: A wide range of free teaching materials that can be downloaded for use in classrooms. In one lesson, students can navigate a 3D model of the interior and exterior of the ISS, and face spontaneous challenges to solve in real time. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) aims to inspire children to "pursue craftsmanship" and to heighten their "awareness of the importance of life and their responsibilities in society". Through

3536-402: Is a large space station that was assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), ESA (Europe), JAXA (Japan), and CSA (Canada). The ISS is the largest space station ever built. Its primary purpose is to perform microgravity and space environment experiments. Operationally,

3672-431: Is an important ISS research activity, with the objective of reaping economic benefits through the improvement of techniques used on Earth. Other areas of interest include the effect of low gravity on combustion, through the study of the efficiency of burning and control of emissions and pollutants. These findings may improve knowledge about energy production and lead to economic and environmental benefits. The ISS provides

3808-575: Is highly resistant to environmental hazards , were found to survive for three years in outer space , based on studies conducted on the International Space Station. These findings supported the notion of panspermia , the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe , distributed in various ways, including space dust , meteoroids , asteroids , comets , planetoids or contaminated spacecraft . Remote sensing of

3944-534: Is intended to detect dark matter and answer other fundamental questions about our universe. According to NASA, the AMS is as important as the Hubble Space Telescope . Currently docked on station, it could not have been easily accommodated on a free flying satellite platform because of its power and bandwidth needs. On 3 April 2013, scientists reported that hints of dark matter may have been detected by

4080-501: Is likely to be a global effort." Currently, US federal legislation prevents NASA co-operation with China on space projects without approval by the FBI and Congress. The ISS crew provides opportunities for students on Earth by running student-developed experiments, making educational demonstrations, allowing for student participation in classroom versions of ISS experiments, and directly engaging students using radio, and email. ESA offers

4216-558: The Prichal module, docked in November 2021. As of November 2021, the station consists of 18 pressurised modules (including airlocks) and the Integrated Truss Structure. The ISS functions as a modular space station, enabling the addition or removal of modules from its structure for increased adaptability. Space race The Space Race (Russian: Космическая гонка [kɐsˈmʲitɕɪskəjə ˈɡonkə] )

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4352-524: The Atlas missile , was tested in late 1958. ICBMs presented the ability to strike targets on the other side of the globe in a very short amount of time and in a manner which was impervious to air interception such as bombers might have been. The value which ICBMs presented in a nuclear standoff were very substantial, and this fact greatly accelerated efforts to develop rocket and rocket interception technology. The first Soviet development of artillery rockets

4488-510: The Canadarm2 and Dextre , a joint Canadian-U.S. endeavor. All of these components were shipped to the SSPF for launch processing. The assembly of the International Space Station, a major endeavour in space architecture , began in November 1998. Modules in the Russian segment launched and docked autonomously, with the exception of Rassvet . Other modules and components were delivered by

4624-581: The Columbus programme, the most ambitious effort in space undertaken by that organization at the time. The plan spearheaded by Germany and Italy included a module which would be attached to Freedom , and with the capability to evolve into a full-fledged European orbital outpost before the end of the century. Increasing costs threw these plans into doubt in the early 1990s. Congress was unwilling to provide enough money to build and operate Freedom , and demanded NASA increase international participation to defray

4760-537: The MARS-500 experiment, a crew isolation experiment conducted on Earth, ESA states, "Whereas the ISS is essential for answering questions concerning the possible impact of weightlessness, radiation and other space-specific factors, aspects such as the effect of long-term isolation and confinement can be more appropriately addressed via ground-based simulations". Sergey Krasnov, the head of human space flight programmes for Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, in 2011 suggested

4896-577: The Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) , and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer . Gravity at the altitude of the ISS is approximately 90% as strong as at Earth's surface, but objects in orbit are in a continuous state of freefall , resulting in an apparent state of weightlessness . This perceived weightlessness is disturbed by five effects: Researchers are investigating the effect of the station's near-weightless environment on

5032-592: The National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C., with a paper titled "Satellite Over the Planet", on October 6, 1957. Korolev anticipated that von Braun might launch a Jupiter-C with a satellite payload on or around October 4 or 5, in conjunction with the paper. He hastened the launch, moving it to October 4. The launch vehicle for PS-1 was a modified R-7 – vehicle 8K71PS number M1-PS – without much of

5168-596: The National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It also created a Civilian-Military Liaison Committee, appointed by the President, responsible for coordinating the nation's civilian and military space programs. On October 21, 1959, Eisenhower approved the transfer of the Army's remaining space-related activities to NASA. On July 1, 1960,

5304-1034: The Operations and Checkout Building and the Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The US Orbital Segment also hosts the Columbus module contributed by the European Space Agency and built in Germany, the Kibō module contributed by Japan and built at the Tsukuba Space Center and the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science , along with

5440-604: The RS-82 and RS-132 missiles , which became the basis for the Katyusha multiple rocket launcher , During the 1930s Soviet rocket technology was comparable to Germany's, but Joseph Stalin 's Great Purge from 1936 to 1938 severely damaged its progress. In 1945 the Soviets captured several key Nazi German A-4 ( V-2 ) rocket production facilities, and also gained the services of some German scientists and engineers related to

5576-543: The Space Shuttle , which then had to be installed by astronauts either remotely using robotic arms or during spacewalks, more formally known as extra-vehicular activities (EVAs). By 5 June 2011 astronauts had made over 159 EVAs to add components to the station, totaling more than 1,000 hours in space. The foundation for the ISS was laid with the launch of the Russian-built Zarya module atop

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5712-520: The United Nations . The USSR demonstrated 24-hour launch pad turnaround and launched two piloted spacecraft, Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 , in essentially identical orbits, on August 11 and 12, 1962. The two spacecraft came within approximately 6.5 kilometers (3.5 nautical miles) of one another, close enough for radio communication, but then drifted as far apart as 2,850 kilometers (1,540 nautical miles). The Vostok had no maneuvering rockets to keep

5848-578: The Vergeltungswaffe 2 (V-2) developed by Nazi Germany to bomb the Allies in the war. After the war, both the US and USSR acquired custody of German rocket development assets which they used to leverage the development of their own missiles. Public interest in space flight was first aroused in October 1951 when the Soviet rocketry engineer Mikhail Tikhonravov published "Flight to the Moon" in

5984-401: The 1957–58 International Geophysical Year launches to establish this principle in international law. Eisenhower also feared that he might cause an international incident and be called a "warmonger" if he were to use military missiles as launchers. Therefore, he selected the untried Naval Research Laboratory 's Vanguard rocket , which was a research-only rocket. This meant that von Braun's team

6120-405: The 1960s. They cloaked the program in a shroud of secrecy; public pronouncements were uniformly positive. As far as the public knew, the Soviet space program had never experienced failure. According to historian James Andrews, "With almost no exceptions, coverage of Soviet space exploits, especially in the case of human space missions, omitted reports of failure or trouble". Dominic Phelan says in

6256-407: The 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project , the first docking of spacecraft from two different spacefaring nations. The ASTP was considered a success, and further joint missions were also contemplated. One such concept was International Skylab, which proposed launching the backup Skylab B space station for a mission that would see multiple visits by both Apollo and Soyuz crew vehicles. More ambitious

6392-785: The AMS. According to the scientists, "The first results from the space-borne Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer confirm an unexplained excess of high-energy positrons in Earth-bound cosmic rays". The space environment is hostile to life. Unprotected presence in space is characterised by an intense radiation field (consisting primarily of protons and other subatomic charged particles from the solar wind , in addition to cosmic rays ), high vacuum, extreme temperatures, and microgravity. Some simple forms of life called extremophiles , as well as small invertebrates called tardigrades can survive in this environment in an extremely dry state through desiccation . Medical research improves knowledge about

6528-598: The Air Force PGM-11 Redstone rocket family at Cape Canaveral. By 1957, a descendant of the Air Force MX-774 received top-priority funding. and evolved into the Atlas-A , the first successful American ICBM. The Atlas made use of a thin stainless steel fuel tank which relied on the internal pressure of the tank for structural integrity, this allowed an overall lighter weight design. WD-40

6664-550: The Army's first operational medium-range ballistic missile, the Redstone rocket , derivatives of which launched both America's first satellite, and the first piloted Mercury space missions. It became the basis for both the Jupiter and Saturn family of rockets . Each of the United States armed services had its own ICBM development program. The Air Force began ICBM research in 1945 with the MX-774 . In 1950, von Braun began testing

6800-542: The Council of Ministers to build a Prosteishy Sputnik (PS-1), or simple satellite. The council also decreed that Object D be postponed until April 1958. The new Sputnik was a metallic sphere that would be a much lighter craft, weighing 83.8 kilograms (185 lb) and having a 58-centimeter (23 in) diameter. The satellite would not contain the complex instrumentation that Object D had, but had two radio transmitters operating on different short wave radio frequencies,

6936-403: The Earth above the magnetic equator. Van Allen was also the man who designed and built the satellite instrumentation of Explorer 1 . The satellite measured three phenomena: cosmic ray and radiation levels, the temperature in the spacecraft, and the frequency of collisions with micrometeorites. The satellite had no memory for data storage, therefore it had to transmit continuously. In March 1958

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7072-426: The Earth, astronomy, and deep space research on the ISS have significantly increased during the 2010s after the completion of the US Orbital Segment in 2011. Throughout the more than 20 years of the ISS program, researchers aboard the ISS and on the ground have examined aerosols , ozone , lightning , and oxides in Earth's atmosphere, as well as the Sun , cosmic rays, cosmic dust , antimatter , and dark matter in

7208-415: The ISS crew. ARISS is an international working group, consisting of delegations from nine countries including several in Europe, as well as Japan, Russia, Canada, and the United States. In areas where radio equipment cannot be used, speakerphones connect students to ground stations which then connect the calls to the space station. First Orbit is a 2011 feature-length documentary film about Vostok 1 ,

7344-606: The ISS was given additional roles of serving commercial, diplomatic, and educational purposes. The ISS provides a platform to conduct scientific research, with power, data, cooling, and crew available to support experiments. Small uncrewed spacecraft can also provide platforms for experiments, especially those involving zero gravity and exposure to space, but space stations offer a long-term environment where studies can be performed potentially for decades, combined with ready access by human researchers. The ISS simplifies individual experiments by allowing groups of experiments to share

7480-464: The Integrated Truss Structure with the installation of the fourth and final set of solar arrays. The final section of Kibō was delivered in July 2009 on STS-127 , followed by the Russian Poisk module. The US Tranquility module was delivered in February 2010 during STS-130 , alongside the Cupola , followed by the penultimate Russian module, Rassvet , in May 2010. Rassvet was delivered by Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-132 in exchange for

7616-404: The Moon before the US with its N1 rocket but did not succeed, and eventually canceled it to concentrate on Salyut , the first space station program, and the first landings on Venus and on Mars . Meanwhile, the US landed five more Apollo crews on the Moon and continued exploration of other extraterrestrial bodies robotically. A period of détente followed with the April 1972 agreement on

7752-531: The Moon. The 730-pound (330 kg) Ranger 4 became the first US spacecraft to reach the Moon, but its solar panels and navigational system failed near the Moon and it impacted the far side without returning any scientific data. Ranger 5 ran out of power and missed the Moon by 725 kilometers (391 nmi) on October 21, 1962. The first successful Ranger mission was the 806-pound (366 kg) Block III Ranger 7 which impacted on July 31, 1964. Ranger had three successful impactors out of nine attempts. In 1963,

7888-438: The Moon. The fifth attempt on June 18 also failed at launch. The 390-kilogram (860 lb) Luna 2 successfully impacted the Moon on September 14, 1959. The 278.5-kilogram (614 lb) Luna 3 successfully flew by the Moon and sent back pictures of its far side on October 7, 1959. The US first embarked on the Pioneer program in 1958 by launching the first probe , albeit ending in failure. A subsequent probe named Pioneer 1

8024-405: The R-1, R-2 and R-5 undertook various experiments between 1949 and 1958, including flights with space dogs . Design work began in 1953 on the R-7 Semyorka with the requirement for a missile with a launch mass of 170 to 200 tons, range of 8,500 km and carrying a 3,000 kg (6,600 lb) nuclear warhead, powerful enough to launch a nuclear warhead against the United States. In late 1953

8160-575: The Redstone Arsenal became NASA's George C. Marshall Space Flight Center , with von Braun as its first director. Development of the Saturn rocket family , which when mature gave the US parity with the Soviets in terms of lifting capability, was thus transferred to NASA. In 1958, Korolev upgraded the R-7 to be able to launch a 400-kilogram (880 lb) payload to the Moon. The Luna program began with three failed secret 1958 attempts to launch Luna E-1 -class impactor probes. The fourth attempt, Luna 1 , launched successfully on January 2, 1959, but missed

8296-432: The Russian Proton delivery of the US-funded Zarya module in 1998. The last pressurised module of the USOS, Leonardo , was brought to the station in February 2011 on the final flight of Discovery , STS-133 . Russia's new primary research module Nauka docked in July 2021, along with the European Robotic Arm which can relocate itself to different parts of the Russian modules of the station. Russia's latest addition,

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8432-412: The Russian State Archive. Nespoli is credited as the director of photography for this documentary film, as he recorded the majority of the footage himself during Expedition 26 / 27 . The film was streamed in a global YouTube premiere in 2011 under a free licence through the website firstorbit.org . In May 2013, commander Chris Hadfield shot a music video of David Bowie 's " Space Oddity " on board

8568-409: The Salyut and Mir space stations. In 1984 the ESA was invited to participate in Space Station Freedom , and the ESA approved the Columbus laboratory by 1987. The Japanese Experiment Module (JEM), or Kibō , was announced in 1985, as part of the Freedom space station in response to a NASA request in 1982. In early 1985, science ministers from the European Space Agency (ESA) countries approved

8704-448: The Solar system, including the Moon and Mars." A crewed mission to Mars may be a multinational effort involving space agencies and countries outside the current ISS partnership. In 2010, ESA Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain stated his agency was ready to propose to the other four partners that China, India, and South Korea be invited to join the ISS partnership. NASA chief Charles Bolden stated in February 2011, "Any mission to Mars

8840-475: The Soviet Union's "2nd Generation" Luna programme was less successful, Luna 4 , Luna 5 , Luna 6 , Luna 7 , and Luna 8 were all met with mission failures. However, in 1966 Luna 9 achieved the first soft-landing on the Moon, and successfully transmitted photography from the surface. Luna 10 marked the first man-made object to establish an orbit around the Moon, followed by Luna 11 , Luna 12 , and Luna 14 which also successfully established orbits. Luna 12

8976-454: The Soviet Union. The first ISS module was launched in 1998. Major modules have been launched by Proton and Soyuz rockets and by the Space Shuttle launch system. The first long-term residents, Expedition 1 , arrived on 2 November 2000. Since then, the station has been continuously occupied for 24 years and 26 days, the longest continuous human presence in space. As of March 2024 , 279 individuals from 22 countries have visited

9112-441: The Soviet embassy of his country's intention to launch a satellite as well, in the "near future". On August 30, 1955, Korolev managed to get the Soviet Academy of Sciences to create a commission whose purpose was to beat the Americans into Earth orbit: this was the de facto start date for the Space Race. The Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union began a policy of treating development of its space program as top-secret. When

9248-409: The Sputnik project was first approved, one of the immediate courses of action the Politburo took was to consider what to announce to the world regarding their event. The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) established precedents for all official announcements on the Soviet space program. The information eventually released did not offer details on who built and launched the satellite or why it

9384-402: The U.S. pressurized modules, the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM), the Columbus Orbital Facility (COF), and the main power distribution electronics of the S0 , S1 and P1 Trusses. The EATCS consists of two independent Loops (Loop A & Loop B), which both use mechanically pumped fluid state ammonia in closed-loop circuits. The EATCS is capable of rejecting up to 70 kW, and provides

9520-415: The US Collier's magazine reacted with a series of seven articles Man Will Conquer Space Soon! detailing Wernher von Braun 's plans for crewed spaceflight. In March 1955, Disneyland's animated episode " Man in Space " in the US television with an audience of about 40 million people eventually fired the public enthusiasm for space travel and raised government interest, both in the US and USSR. Soon after

9656-413: The USSR but did not take him seriously. The Soviet success raised a great deal of concern in the United States. For example, economist Bernard Baruch wrote in an open letter titled "The Lessons of Defeat" to the New York Herald Tribune : "While we devote our industrial and technological power to producing new model automobiles and more gadgets, the Soviet Union is conquering space. ... It is Russia, not

9792-422: The USSR had achieved a leading advantage in rocket technology. The dumbfounded CIA estimated the launch weight at 500 metric tons requiring an initial thrust of more than 1,000 tons and supposed the use of a three-stage rocket. In a secret report, it concluded that ″the launching of two earth satellites must have been a stupendous scientific achievement. ... Launching of these satellites does indicate, however, that

9928-505: The USSR has perfected an ICBM which they can put on any desired target with accuracy." In reality, the launch weight of the Soviet rocket was 267 metric tons with an initial thrust of 410 tons with one and a half stages. The CIA's misjudgement was caused by extrapolating the parameters of the US Atlas rocket developed at the same time (launch weight 82 tons, initial thrust 135 tones, maximum payload of 70 kg for low Earth orbit ). In part,

10064-489: The USSR sent animals into space to determine the safety of the environment before sending the first humans. The USSR used dogs for this purpose, and the US used monkeys and apes . The first mammal in space was Albert II , a rhesus monkey launched by the US on a sub-orbital flight on June 14, 1949, who died on landing due to a parachute malfunction. The USSR sent the dog Laika into orbit on Sputnik 2 on November 3, 1957, for an intended ten-day flight. They did not yet have

10200-415: The United States, who has had the imagination to hitch its wagon to the stars and the skill to reach for the moon and all but grasp it. America is worried. It should be." Eisenhower ordered project Vanguard to move up its timetable and launch its satellite much sooner than originally planned. The December 6, 1957 Project Vanguard launch failure occurred at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It

10336-467: The Vostok program was over. The craft consisted of a spherical descent module with a mass of 2.46 tonnes (5,400 lb) and a diameter of 2.3 meters (7.5 ft), with a cylindrical inner cabin housing the cosmonaut, instruments, and escape system; and a biconic instrument module with a mass of 2.27 tonnes (5,000 lb), 2.25 meters (7.4 ft) long and 2.43 meters (8.0 ft) in diameter, containing

10472-511: The ability to detect if a meteoroid were to penetrate its pressure hull, and the ability to detect the density of the Earth's thermosphere . Korolev was buoyed by the first successful launches of the R-7 rocket in August and September, which paved the way for the launch of Sputnik . Word came that the US was planning to announce a major breakthrough at an International Geophysical Year conference at

10608-450: The basis for the R-7 family which includes Sputnik , Luna , Molniya , Vostok , and Voskhod space launchers , as well as later Soyuz variants. Several versions are still in use and it has become the world's most reliable space launcher. Although American rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard developed, patented, and flew small liquid-propellant rockets as early as 1914, the United States

10744-527: The book Cold War Space Sleuths (Springer-Praxis 2013): "The USSR was famously described by Winston Churchill as 'a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma' and nothing signified this more than the search for the truth behind its space program during the Cold War. Although the Space Race was literally played out above our heads, it was often obscured by a figurative 'space curtain' that took much effort to see through". Initially, President Eisenhower

10880-515: The capsule was just large enough for a single astronaut. The first suborbital spacecraft weighed 3,000 pounds (1,400 kg); the heaviest, Mercury-Atlas 9, weighed 3,000 pounds (1,400 kg) fully loaded. On reentry, the astronaut would stay in the craft through splashdown by parachute in the Atlantic Ocean. On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, launching in a ballistic trajectory on Mercury-Redstone 3 , in

11016-487: The captured V-2s and began a program of launching them and instructing American engineers in their operation. These tests led to the first photos of Earth from space , and the first two-stage rocket, the WAC Corporal - V-2 combination, in 1949. The German rocket team was moved from Fort Bliss to the Army's new Redstone Arsenal , located in Huntsville, Alabama , in 1950. From here, von Braun and his team developed

11152-539: The connection of two modules built on different continents, by nations that were once bitter rivals was a significant milestone, these two initial modules lacked life support systems and the ISS remained unmanned for the next two years. At the time, the Russian station Mir was still inhabited. The turning point arrived in July 2000 with the launch of the Zvezda module. Equipped with living quarters and life-support systems, Zvezda enabled continuous human presence aboard

11288-461: The diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions in space. Usually, there is no physician on board the ISS and diagnosis of medical conditions is a challenge. It is anticipated that remotely guided ultrasound scans will have application on Earth in emergency and rural care situations where access to a trained physician is difficult. In August 2020, scientists reported that bacteria from Earth, particularly Deinococcus radiodurans bacteria, which

11424-405: The effects of long-term space exposure on the human body, including muscle atrophy , bone loss , and fluid shift. These data will be used to determine whether high duration human spaceflight and space colonisation are feasible. In 2006, data on bone loss and muscular atrophy suggested that there would be a significant risk of fractures and movement problems if astronauts landed on a planet after

11560-531: The end of World War II, the two former allies became engaged in a state of political conflict and military tension known as the Cold War (1947–1991), which polarized Europe between the Soviet Union's satellite states (often referred to as the Eastern Bloc ) and the states of the Western world allied with the U.S. In August 1949, the Soviet Union became the second nuclear power after the United States with

11696-413: The end of World War II. The competition gained Western public attention with the " Sputnik crisis ", when the USSR achieved the first successful satellite launch, Sputnik 1 , on October 4, 1957. It gained momentum when the USSR sent the first human, Yuri Gagarin , into space with the orbital flight of Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. These were followed by a string of other firsts achieved by the Soviets over

11832-437: The engine system and propellant. After reentry, the cosmonaut would eject at about 7,000 meters (23,000 ft) over the USSR and descend via parachute, while the capsule would land separately, because the descent module made an extremely rough landing that could have left a cosmonaut seriously injured. The "Vostok spaceship" was first displayed at the July 1961 Tushino air show , mounted on its launch vehicle's third stage, with

11968-682: The evolution, development, growth and internal processes of plants and animals. In response to some of the data, NASA wants to investigate microgravity 's effects on the growth of three-dimensional, human-like tissues and the unusual protein crystals that can be formed in space. Investigating the physics of fluids in microgravity will provide better models of the behaviour of fluids. Because fluids can be almost completely combined in microgravity, physicists investigate fluids that do not mix well on Earth. Examining reactions that are slowed by low gravity and low temperatures will improve our understanding of superconductivity . The study of materials science

12104-609: The far side of the moon. In late 1966, Luna 13 became the third spacecraft to make a soft-landing on the Moon, with the American Surveyor 1 having now taken second. Later on, to aid the Apollo missions, the Surveyor program was conducted by NASA, with five successful soft landings out of seven attempts from 1966 to 1968. The Lunar Orbiter program had five successes out of five attempts in 1966–1967. The US and

12240-553: The favourable data of the Soviet launcher was based on concepts proposed by the German rocket scientists headed by Helmut Gröttrup on Gorodomlya Island , such as, among other things, the rigorous weight saving, the control of the residual fuel quantities and a reduced thrust to weight relation of 1.4 instead of usual factor 2. The CIA had heard about such details already in January 1954 when it interrogated Göttrup after his return from

12376-431: The first crewed space flight around the Earth. By matching the orbit of the ISS to that of Vostok 1 as closely as possible, in terms of ground path and time of day, documentary filmmaker Christopher Riley and ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli were able to film the view that Yuri Gagarin saw on his pioneering orbital space flight. This new footage was cut together with the original Vostok 1 mission audio recordings sourced from

12512-403: The go-ahead to launch their Jupiter-C rocket as soon as they could. In Britain, the US's Western Cold War ally, the reaction was mixed: some celebrated the fact that the Soviets had reached space first, while others feared the destructive potential that military uses of spacecraft might bring. The Daily Express predicted that the US would catch up to and pass the USSR in space; "never doubt for

12648-468: The mission to justify the death of the dog...". On August 19, 1960, the dogs Belka and Strelka were sent into orbit aboard Sputnik 5 and safely returned. The Americans sent the chimpanzee Ham on a suborbital flight of the Mercury capsule on Mercury-Redstone 2 and recovered him safely on January 31, 1961. The chimpanzee Enos was launched on Mercury-Atlas 5 on November 29, 1961, into what

12784-513: The newly founded Russian Federation to end their Cold War competition also in space, by agreeing in 1993 on the Shuttle– Mir and International Space Station programs . Although Germans, Americans and Soviets experimented with small liquid-fuel rockets before World War II, launching satellites and humans into space required the development of larger ballistic missiles such as Wernher von Braun 's Aggregat-4 (A-4) , which became known as

12920-486: The newspaper Pionerskaya pravda for young readers. He described a two-person interplanetary spaceship of the future and the industrial and technological processes required to create it. He ended the short article with a clear forecast of the future: "We do not have long to wait. We can assume that the bold dream of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky will be realized within the next 10 to 15 years." From March 1952 to April 1954,

13056-461: The next few years. Gagarin's flight led US president John F. Kennedy to raise the stakes on May 25, 1961, by asking the US Congress to commit to the goal of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" before the end of the decade. Both countries began developing super heavy-lift launch vehicles , with the US successfully deploying the Saturn V , which was large enough to send

13192-476: The nose cone in place concealing the spherical capsule. A tail section with eight fins was added in an apparent attempt to confuse western observers. This also appeared on official commemorative stamps and a documentary. The Soviets finally revealed the true appearance of their Vostok capsule at the April 1965 Moscow Economic Exhibition. On April 12, 1961, the USSR surprised the world by launching Yuri Gagarin into

13328-621: The project. A-4s were assembled and studied and the experience derived from assembling and launching A4 rockets was directly applied to the Soviet copy, called the R-1 , with NII-88 chief designer Sergei Korolev overseeing the R-1's development., The R-1 entered into service in the Soviet Army on 28 November 1950. By the latter half of 1946, Korolev and rocket engineer Valentin Glushko had, with extensive input from German engineers, outlined

13464-486: The proposed US satellites, having a weight of 1,400 kilograms (3,100 lb), of which 300 kilograms (660 lb) would be composed of scientific instruments that would photograph the Earth, take readings on radiation levels, and check on the planet's magnetic field. However, things were not going along well with the design and manufacturing of the satellite, so in February 1957, Korolev sought and received permission from

13600-550: The rising costs or they would cancel the entire project outright. Simultaneously, the USSR was conducting planning for the Mir-2 space station, and had begun constructing modules for the new station by the mid-1980s. However the collapse of the Soviet Union required these plans to be greatly downscaled, and soon Mir-2 was in danger of never being launched at all. With both space station projects in jeopardy, American and Russian officials met and proposed they be combined. The ISS

13736-412: The routinely scheduled launches of resupply craft allows new hardware to be launched with relative ease. Crews fly expeditions of several months' duration, providing approximately 160 person-hours per week of labour with a crew of six. However, a considerable amount of crew time is taken up by station maintenance. Perhaps the most notable ISS experiment is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), which

13872-420: The same launches and crew time. Research is conducted in a wide variety of fields, including astrobiology , astronomy , physical sciences , materials science , space weather , meteorology , and human research including space medicine and the life sciences . Scientists on Earth have timely access to the data and can suggest experimental modifications to the crew. If follow-on experiments are necessary,

14008-481: The size or shape of their rockets or cabins or most of their spaceships, except for the first Sputniks, lunar probes, and Venus probe. The Soviet military maintained control over the space program; Korolev's OKB-1 design bureau was subordinated under the Ministry of General Machine Building , tasked with the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, and continued to give its assets random identifiers into

14144-473: The space station. The ISS is expected to have additional modules (the Axiom Orbital Segment , for example) and will be in service until the end of 2030, after which it is planned to be de-orbited by a dedicated NASA spacecraft. As the space race drew to a close in the early 1970s, the US and USSR began to contemplate a variety of potential collaborations in outer space. This culminated in

14280-809: The stage was set for nationalistic competition. On July 29, 1955, James C. Hagerty , President Dwight D. Eisenhower 's press secretary, announced that the United States intended to launch "small Earth circling satellites" between July 1, 1957, and December 31, 1958, as part of the US contribution to the International Geophysical Year (IGY). On August 2, at the Sixth Congress of the International Astronautical Federation in Copenhagen, scientist Leonid I. Sedov told international reporters at

14416-475: The station is divided into two sections: the Russian Orbital Segment (ROS) assembled by Roscosmos, and the US Orbital Segment (USOS), assembled by NASA, JAXA, ESA and CSA. A striking feature of the ISS is the Integrated Truss Structure , which connects the large solar panels and radiators to the pressurized modules. The pressurized modules are specialized for research, habitation, storage, spacecraft control, and airlock functions. Visiting spacecraft dock at

14552-404: The station via its eight docking and berthing ports . The ISS maintains an orbit with an average altitude of 400 kilometres (250 mi) and circles the Earth in roughly 93 minutes, completing 15.5 orbits per day. The ISS programme combines two prior plans to construct crewed Earth-orbiting stations: Space Station Freedom planned by the United States, and the Mir-2 station, planned by

14688-582: The station with Ku band communications, additional attitude control needed for the additional mass of the USOS, and additional solar arrays. Over the next two years, the station continued to expand. A Soyuz-U rocket delivered the Pirs docking compartment . The Space Shuttles Discovery , Atlantis , and Endeavour delivered the American Destiny laboratory and Quest airlock , in addition to

14824-554: The station's main robot arm, the Canadarm2 , and several more segments of the Integrated Truss Structure. Tragedy struck in 2003 with the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia , which grounded the rest of the Shuttle fleet, halting construction of the ISS. Assembly resumed in 2006 with the arrival of STS-115 with Atlantis , which delivered the station's second set of solar arrays. Several more truss segments and

14960-462: The station, which was released on YouTube. It was the first music video filmed in space. In November 2017, while participating in Expedition 52 / 53 on the ISS, Paolo Nespoli made two recordings of his spoken voice (one in English and the other in his native Italian), for use on Misplaced Pages articles. These were the first content made in space specifically for Misplaced Pages. In November 2021,

15096-472: The station. The first crew, Expedition 1 , arrived that November aboard Soyuz TM-31 . The ISS grew steadily over the following years, with modules delivered by both Russian rockets and the Space Shuttle. Expedition 1 arrived midway between the Space Shuttle flights of missions STS-92 and STS-97 . These two flights each added segments of the station's Integrated Truss Structure , which provided

15232-523: The successful RDS-1 nuclear weapon test. In October 1957, the Soviet Union conducted the world’s first successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), this was the R-7 Semyorka (also known as SS-6 by NATO) and was seen as capable of striking U.S. territory with a nuclear payload. Fears in the US due to this perceived threat became known as the Missile gap . The first American ICBM,

15368-456: The technology to return Laika safely to Earth, and the government reported Laika died when the oxygen ran out, but in October 2002 her true cause of death was reported as stress and overheating on the fourth orbit due to failure of the air conditioning system. At a Moscow press conference in 1998 Oleg Gazenko , a senior Soviet scientist involved in the project, stated "The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We did not learn enough from

15504-483: The test equipment and radio gear that was present in the previous launches. It arrived at the Soviet missile base Tyura-Tam in September and was prepared for its mission at launch site number one . The first launch took place on Friday, October 4, 1957, at exactly 10:28:34 pm Moscow time, with the R-7 and the now named Sputnik 1 satellite lifting off the launch pad and placing the artificial "moon" into an orbit

15640-479: The time of the NACA. It consisted of a conical capsule with a cylindrical pack of three solid-fuel retro-rockets strapped over a beryllium or fiberglass heat shield on the blunt end. Base diameter at the blunt end was 6.0 feet (1.8 m) and length was 10.8 feet (3.3 m); with the launch escape system added, the overall length was 25.9 feet (7.9 m). With 100 cubic feet (2.8 m ) of habitable volume,

15776-435: The two craft a controlled distance apart. Vostok 4 also set a record of nearly four days in space. The first woman, Valentina Tereshkova , was launched into space on Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963, as (possibly) a medical experiment. She was the only one to fly of a small group of female parachutist factory workers (unlike the male cosmonauts who were military test pilots), chosen by the head of cosmonaut training because he read

15912-852: The universe. Examples of Earth-viewing remote sensing experiments that have flown on the ISS are the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 , ISS-RapidScat , ECOSTRESS , the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation , and the Cloud Aerosol Transport System . ISS-based astronomy telescopes and experiments include SOLAR , the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer , the Calorimetric Electron Telescope ,

16048-445: The warhead's mass was increased to 5.5 to 6 tons to accommodate the then planned theromonuclear bomb . The R-7 was designed in a two-stage configuration, with four boosters that would jettison when empty. On the 21 August 1957 the R-7 flew 6,000 km (3,700 mi), and became the worlds's first intercontinental ballistic missile. Two months later the R-7 launched Sputnik 1 , the first artificial satellite, into orbit, and became

16184-643: Was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union , to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile -based nuclear arms race between the two nations following World War II and had its peak with the more particular Moon Race to land on the Moon between the US moonshot and Soviet moonshot programs. The technological advantage demonstrated by spaceflight achievement

16320-492: Was a monumental failure, exploding a few seconds after launch, and it became an international joke. The satellite appeared in newspapers under the names Flopnik, Stayputnik, Kaputnik, and Dudnik. In the United Nations, the Soviet delegate offered the US representative aid "under the Soviet program of technical assistance to backwards nations." Only in the wake of this very public failure did von Braun's Redstone team get

16456-442: Was a satellite mission that failed, expedited plans to get his own satellite in orbit. Since the R-7 was substantially more powerful than any of the US launch vehicles , he made sure to take full advantage of this capability by designing Object D as his primary satellite. It was given the designation 'D', to distinguish it from other R-7 payload designations 'A', 'B', 'V', and 'G' which were nuclear weapon payloads. Object D dwarfed

16592-460: Was able to transmit detailed photography of the surface from orbit. Luna 10, 12, and Luna 14 conducted Gamma ray spectrometry of the Moon, among other tests. The Zond programme was orchestrated alongside the Luna programme with Zond 1 and Zond 2 launching in 1964, intended as flyby missions, however both failed. Zond 3 however was successful, and transmitted high quality photography from

16728-683: Was carried out in the 1930s by the Group for the Study of Reactive Motion (GIRD), where Soviet rocket pioneers Sergey Korolev , Friedrich Zander , Mikhail Tikhonravov and Leonid Dushkin launched GIRD-X , the first Soviet liquid-fueled rocket in 1933. In 1933 the two design bureaus were combined into the Reactive Scientific Research Institute and produced the RP-318, the USSR's first rocket-powered aircraft and

16864-593: Was developed to prevent rust on the Atlas rockets so that rust protecting paint could be avoided, in order to further reduce weight. A later variant of the Atlas, the Atlas-D , served as a nuclear ICBM and as the orbital launch vehicle for Project Mercury and the remote-controlled Agena Target Vehicle used in Project Gemini . In 1955, with both the United States and the Soviet Union building ballistic missiles that could be used to launch objects into space,

17000-482: Was in 1921 when the Soviet military sanctioned the Gas Dynamics Laboratory , a small research laboratory to explore solid-fuel rockets, led by Nikolai Tikhomirov , who had begun studying solid and liquid-fueled rockets in 1894, and obtained a patent in 1915 for "self-propelled aerial and water-surface mines. The first test-firing of a solid fuel rocket was carried out in 1928. Further development

17136-642: Was launched with the intention of orbiting the Moon only to result in a partial mission success when it reached an apogee of 113,800 km before falling back to Earth. The missions of Pioneer 2 and Pioneer 3 failed whereas Pioneer 4 had one partially successful lunar flyby in March 1959. The Ranger program was started in 1959 by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory . The Block I Ranger 1 and Ranger 2 suffered Atlas-Agena launch failures in August and November 1961. The 727-pound (330 kg) Block II Ranger 3 launched successfully on January 26, 1962, but missed

17272-399: Was launched. However, the public release is illuminating in what it does reveal: "there is an abundance of arcane scientific and technical data... as if to overwhelm the reader with mathematics in the absence of even a picture of the object". The Soviet space program's use of secrecy served as both a tool to prevent the leaking of classified information between countries, and also to create

17408-426: Was not allowed to put a satellite into orbit with their Jupiter-C rocket, because of its intended use as a future military vehicle. On September 20, 1956, von Braun and his team did launch a Jupiter-C that was capable of putting a satellite into orbit, but the launch was used only as a suborbital test of reentry vehicle technology. Korolev received word about von Braun's 1956 Jupiter-C test and, mistakenly thinking it

17544-427: Was on its way to completing its first orbit. About 95 minutes after launch, the satellite flew over its launch site, and its radio signals were picked up by the engineers and military personnel at Tyura-Tam: that's when Korolev and his team celebrated the first successful artificial satellite placed into Earth-orbit. At the latest, the successful start of Sputnik 2 with its weight of more than 500 kg proved that

17680-401: Was originally intended to be a laboratory, observatory, and factory while providing transportation, maintenance, and a low Earth orbit staging base for possible future missions to the Moon, Mars, and asteroids. However, not all of the uses envisioned in the initial memorandum of understanding between NASA and Roscosmos have been realised. In the 2010 United States National Space Policy ,

17816-410: Was promptly picked up by US magazines. The competition began on July 30, 1955, when the United States announced its intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year . Four days later, the Soviet Union responded by declaring they would also launch a satellite "in the near future". The launching of satellites was enabled by developments in ballistic missile capabilities since

17952-456: Was seen as necessary for national security and became part of the symbolism and ideology of the time. The Space Race brought pioneering launches of artificial satellites , robotic space probes to the Moon , Venus , and Mars , and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and ultimately to the Moon. Public interest in space travel originated in the 1951 publication of a Soviet youth magazine and

18088-405: Was supposed to be a three-orbit flight. However, the mission was aborted after two orbits due to capsule overheating, and a malfunctioning "avoidance conditioning" test subjecting him to 76 electrical shocks. The Soviets designed their first human space capsule using the same spacecraft bus as their Zenit spy satellite , forcing them to keep the details and true appearance secret until after

18224-550: Was the Skylab-Salyut Space Laboratory, which proposed docking the Skylab B to a Soviet Salyut space station. Falling budgets and rising Cold War tensions in the late 1970s saw these concepts fall by the wayside, along with another plan to have the Space Shuttle dock with a Salyut space station. In the early 1980s, NASA planned to launch a modular space station called Freedom as a counterpart to

18360-547: Was the only one of the three major allied World War II powers to not have its own rocket program, until Von Braun and his engineers were expatriated from Nazi Germany in 1945. The US acquired a large number of V-2 rockets and recruited von Braun and most of his engineering team in Operation Paperclip . The team was sent to the Army's White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, in 1945. They set about assembling

18496-532: Was worried that a satellite passing above a nation at over 100 kilometers (62 mi) might be seen as violating that nation's airspace. He was concerned that the Soviet Union would accuse the Americans of an illegal overflight, thereby scoring a propaganda victory at his expense. Eisenhower and his advisors were of the opinion that a nation's airspace sovereignty did not extend past the Kármán line , and they used

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