Space Race
The Space Race refers to the 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), for dominance in spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the missile-based nuclear arms race between the two nations following World War II. The technological superiority required for such supremacy was seen as necessary for national security, and symbolic of ideological superiority. The Space Race spawned pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, uncrewed space probes of the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and to the Moon. It effectively began with the Soviet launch of the satellite Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, and concluded with the co-operative Apollo–Soyuz Test Project human spaceflight mission in July 1975.
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