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The first animal to orbit Earth for the USSR was a dog named Laika, launched aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft on November 3, 1957 -
The United States' first satellite in space was Explorer 1, launched on January 31, 1958. It was a response to the Soviet Union's earlier launch of Sputnik 1 and carried scientific instruments that led to the discovery of Earth's Van Allen radiation belts. -
The USSR's first satellite was Sputnik 1, launched on October 4, 1957.
Marked the start of the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. -
NASA was created in response to the Soviet Union's Sputnik launch, signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on July 29, 1958, and officially began operations on October 1, 1958 -
Ham the chimpanzee was the first chimpanzee to perform tasks in space, launched by the USA on January 31, 1961, during a suborbital Mercury-Redstone flight. He successfully pulled levers in response to flashing lights, demonstrating that cognitive tasks could be performed in space. The success of his mission helped pave the way for the first human suborbital flight, piloted by Alan Shepard, later that year. -
John F. Kennedy's commitment to landing a man on the moon was a defining moment of his presidency, solidified in his May 25, 1961, speech to Congress and his famous September 12, 1962, address at Rice University. In these speeches, Kennedy committed the nation to the challenging goal of achieving a crewed lunar landing before the end of the decade. "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."