NASA Early Rockets, Army ballistic missile agency
Summary
The Army Ballistic Missile Agency incorporated the von Braun team in key positions with Dr. von Braun as a head of the Development Operations Division. On October 4, 1957, the Nation was shocked when the Russians launched Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite. Two months later, the United States suffered disappointment when a Navy Vanguard rocket, with its satellite payload, failed to develop sufficient thrust and toppled over on the launch pad.
Over its sixty-year history, primarily classified military The Soviet space program was responsible for a number of pioneering accomplishments in space flight, including the first intercontinental ballistic missile (R-7), first satellite (Sputnik 1), first animal in Earth orbit (the dog Laika on Sputnik 2), first human in space and Earth orbit (cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1), first woman in space and Earth orbit (cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6), first spacewalk (cosmonaut Alexey Leonov on Voskhod 2), first Moon impact (Luna 2), first image of the far side of the moon (Luna 3) and unmanned lunar soft landing (Luna 9), first space rover (Lunokhod 1), first sample of lunar soil automatically extracted and brought to Earth (Luna 16), and first space station (Salyut 1). Further notable records included the first interplanetary probes: Venera 1 and Mars 1 to fly by Venus and Mars, respectively, Venera 3 and Mars 2 to impact the respective planet surface, and Venera 7 and Mars 3 to make soft landings on these planets.
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