Sputnik and Nasa

Abstract

The United States and the Soviet Union which were once part of an allegiance during World War II soon became adversaries. This competitive period was known as the Cold War. During the Cold War, national defense and space exploration became priority goals for each superpower. After the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, American public opinion changed because of the perception that there was a technological gap between the Soviet Union and the United States. How could the Soviet Union be leading the United States in technology when the United States prevailed in WWII? The United States then created a new agency to manage air and space research and development called National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The United States knew during World War II that the Germans possessed the knowledge regarding rocketry and technology to launch a rocket above the Earth’s atmosphere. However, Hitler did not further pursue this technology. “Operation Paperclip was the first official Army project aimed at acquiring German know-how about rocketry and technology, grew out of the capture of a hundred of the notorious V-2s and out of interrogations of key scientists and engineers who had worked at the Nazi’s rocket research and development base at Peenemuende.” (Green and Lomask 1997). From 1944-1946, three branches of the armed forces, several universities and several laboratories worked together to reassemble the V-2s and added measuring instruments on the rocket noses for launch. Several launching attempts during this period did record cosmic rays above the Earth’s atmosphere.

In 1952, the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) established July 1, 1957 to December 31, 1958, “as the International Geophysical Year (IGY) because solar activity would be at its highest point then.” (Garber 2007). In 1954, the ICSU wanted artificial satellites that could map the Earth’s surface to be launched during IGY. The ICSU is a union of various scientists from 67 nations that assembled to learn and understand planet Earth. The United States announced its plans to launch a satellite during IGY and requested proposals from its various Government agencies to develop the satellite. The United States chose the Naval Research Laboratory’s Vanguard proposal. Vanguard was going to have a payload of 3.5 pounds. It never made it off the ground. The proposal was cancelled when the Soviet Union surprised the rest of the world in 1957 when it successfully launched the world’s first artificial satellite Sputnik I. The satellite was approximately 183 pounds and the size of a basketball. It took approximately 98 minutes to orbit Earth. The American public realized that the Soviets now had the ability to launch ballistic