Space Age

The Space Age was a time of amazing discoveries about space. It began with the launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, and ended with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. During this time, countries tried to do new things in space, like sending people and machines there.

At first, the United States and the Soviet Union were the main countries. They created special groups, like NASA and the Kosmicheskaya programma SSSR, to help them achieve these goals. This led to many firsts, such as the first human in space and the first steps on the Moon.

Later, other countries joined too. They made their own space groups, such as the European Space Agency, JAXA, ISRO, and CNSA. After the Soviet Union broke apart, Roscosmos continued Russia’s space work.

In the early 2020s, people talked about a “New Space Age.” This was because there was new interest in space travel, with some people taking trips to space, and plans to explore places much farther away, like low Earth orbit and other planets. This included ideas about space tourism and interplanetary travel.

Periodization

The Space Age can be thought of in different ways. Some people talk about a "first" Space Age and a "second" Space Age. The change happened around the 1980s and 1990s. This shows how people have looked at space exploration and technology in different time periods.

Periods

See also: History of spaceflight

Foundational developments to suborbital spaceflights

See also: History of rockets

Some vehicles reached suborbital space before the launch of Sputnik. In June 1944, a German V-2 rocket became the first manmade object to enter space, even if only briefly. In March 1926, American rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard launched the world's first liquid fuel rocket, but it did not reach outer space.

Because the Germans kept their V-2 rocket flights secret, they were not well known at first. The German launches and later sounding rocket tests in the United States and the Soviet Union during the late 1940s and early 1950s were not seen as important enough to mark the start of the Space Age because they did not reach orbit. A rocket powerful enough to reach orbit could also be used as an intercontinental ballistic missile, which could carry a weapon to any place on Earth. Some people think this is why reaching orbit is used to define when the Space Age began.

1957 to 1970s/1980s: Establishment and Space Race

Further information: Space Race

The Space Race was the first era of the Space Age. It was a competition between the United States and the Soviet Union that began when the Soviet Union launched Earth's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957, during the International Geophysical Year. It weighed 83.6 kg and orbited the Earth once every 98 minutes. The race led to quick advances in rocketry, materials science, and other areas. One reason for the space race was military strategy, as both nations were also competing in a nuclear arms race after World War II. Both countries used technology and scientists from Germany's missile program. The skills needed for aviation and rocketry were seen as important for national security and power.

The competition between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War is one reason the Space Age began at that time. Since then, the Space Age has continued to bring scientific knowledge, new markets, inspiration, and agreements between nations that can explore space. Other reasons for the Space Age continuing are protecting Earth from dangerous objects like asteroids and comets.

Much of the technology developed for space has been used for other purposes, such as memory foam. In 1958, the United States launched its first satellite, Explorer 1. That same year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, known as NASA.

Before humans could fly into space, animals were sent to see if space travel would harm them. This helped scientists learn about the effects of high g-forces, microgravity, and radiation at high altitudes.

The Space Race reached its peak with the Apollo program, which excited people around the world. The landing of Apollo 11 was watched by over 500 million people worldwide and is remembered as one of the most important events of the 20th century. Since then, people's attention has shifted to other areas.

The last big moment in the USSR–USA Space Race was the Skylab and Salyut programs, which created the first space stations for the U.S. and USSR in Earth orbit after both countries stopped their moon programs.

After the Apollo program, fewer crewed flights were made from the United States until the shuttle program began, and the space race ended with the Apollo–Soyuz test project in 1975, leading to U.S.–Soviet cooperation. The Soviet Union kept using the Soyuz spacecraft.

The shuttle program brought spaceflight back to the U.S. after the Skylab program, but the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986 caused a big drop in Shuttle flights. NASA stopped flying Shuttles for safety reasons until 1988. In the 1990s, funding for space programs decreased as the Soviet Union broke apart and NASA no longer had direct competition. Instead, it worked more closely with others, like the Shuttle–Mir program and the International Space Station.

Diversification

Participation of private actors and other countries besides the Soviet Union and the United States in spaceflight has been part of space history from the very beginning. The first commercial satellite was launched in 1962, and by 1965, a third country achieving orbital spaceflight joined the race. The launch of Sputnik happened during the international International Geophysical Year in 1957. Soon after, the world began making international laws to govern space activity.

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union began letting people from other countries fly into space through its Intercosmos program, and the United States started to include women and people of colour in its astronaut program.

The first agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union was the 1962 Dryden–Blagonravov agreement, which aimed to share data from weather satellites, study the Earth's magnetic field, and track the NASA Echo II balloon satellite. In 1963, President Kennedy even talked to premier Khrushchev about possibly flying together to the Moon, but after Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963 and Khrushchev left office in October 1964, the competition between the two nations' space programs increased, and discussions about working together became less common. Only later did the United States and the Soviet Union start sharing more information and working together on projects, especially after 1970 when they developed safety standards, creating the APAS-75 and later docking standards. This led to the Apollo–Soyuz mission, which helped start the Shuttle–Mir program and eventually the International Space Station programme.

This international cooperation and the growing number of countries able to fly into space, along with the rise of private spaceflight in the 1980s, led to a new economy and period in space exploration. By the 1990s, people saw space exploration and space technology as something that happened often.

This period of working together continued until competition began to grow again in the 2010s and especially in the early 2020s.

2010s to present: New Space competition

In the early 2000s, the Ansari X Prize competition was created to help start private spaceflight. The winner, Space Ship One in 2004, was the first spaceship not paid for by a government.

Many countries now have space programs, from small technology projects to full programs with launch sites. There are many scientific and commercial satellites in orbit today, and several countries plan to send people into space. Some of these countries are France, India, China, Israel and the United Kingdom, all of which use satellites for watching Earth. Other countries with smaller space programs include Brazil, Germany, Ukraine, and Spain.

For the United States, NASA stopped using all Space Shuttles in 2011. Since then, NASA has used Russia and SpaceX to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. In the 2010s and early 2020s, NASA created a new spacecraft called the Orion to send people to the Moon and Mars. NASA hopes this will start a new era of space exploration. The U.S. military also started the Space Force on December 20, 2019.

A big change in the Space Age today is the privatization of space flight. One major private space company is SpaceX, which owns one of the most powerful rockets in use today, the Falcon Heavy, launched in 2018. Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, wants to create a colony of one million people on Mars by 2050. SpaceX is building the Starship rocket to help with this. Since the Demo-2 mission in 2020, when SpaceX first launched astronauts for NASA to the International Space Station, the company has been able to carry people into orbit. Blue Origin, a company started by Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, is making rockets for space tourism, launching satellites, and future trips to the Moon and beyond. Richard Branson's company Virgin Galactic focuses on vehicles for space tourism. Another company, Virgin Orbit, uses their LauncherOne rocket to launch small satellites from the air. Rocket Lab has created the Electron rocket and the Photon satellite bus to send spacecraft farther into the Solar System, and plans to introduce a larger rocket called Neutron in 2025.

The Space Age came back strongly with NASA's Space Launch System and Orion during the Artemis I mission on November 16, 2022. This was the first time a spacecraft ready for people had orbited the Moon in almost 50 years, and it marked the U.S. ability to send astronauts back to the Moon. Artemis II, a flight around the Moon with people on board, launched on April 1, 2026, and the crew set a new record for the farthest any human has traveled into space, passing the distance set by Apollo 13 in 1970. Other goals for the 2020s include finishing the Lunar Gateway, the first space station around the Moon, and the first human Moon landing since the Apollo missions with Artemis IV. There are also plans to go beyond the original goals of the Space Age from the 1960s.

Chronology

See also: Timeline of space exploration

The Space Age began on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. This event started a race between the United States and the Soviet Union to achieve new milestones in space. Both countries worked to be the first to do important things, with people or robots in space. The Space Age continued until 1975, when the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project brought together American and Soviet spacecraft, marking the end of the Space Race.

Cultural influences

The Space Age brought many new ideas to art, buildings, and everyday things. Cars like the Cadillac Coupe de Ville had shapes that looked like rockets. Buildings such as the Space Needle in Seattle looked like they were from outer space. Fashion changed too, with new styles by designers like André Courrèges and Pierre Cardin. Furniture, playgrounds, and amusement park rides started to have space-themed designs.

Music changed as well. New kinds of music appeared, such as space age pop, space music, space rock, and space-themed music. These styles showed the excitement of exploring space.

Main articles: Googie architecture, Space Age fashions