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The Soviet Union launched the world's first satellite, Sputnik.
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The USA created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, an agency devoted to exploring the universe... and winning the "Space Race",
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At first, the Soviets maintained their superiority in the Space Race, putting the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin.
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Apollo 11 sent three astronauts on a 350,000-km voyage to plant the US flag on the Moon's surface.
Stepping off the Apollo lunar module "The Eagle", Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon. -
Nasa has made some major, sometimes fatal, errors. Most famously, there was the trauma of the 1986 Challenger disaster, in which all seven crew members of a space shuttle were killed live on TV when it exploded 73 seconds later after lift-off.
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When another shuttle, Columbia, burned up on re-entry in 2003, it effectively ended Nasa's rocket program and forced it to rely on Russia's Soyuz rocket to take US astronauts to the International Space Station.
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Nasa plans to return to the Moon.
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The USA, India, China and Israel want to go to Mars, with Nasa hoping to be first by landing humans on the red planet in 2033.
