On March 9, 1961, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 9. This mission was a test flight of the Vostok spacecraft, which would later carry the first cosmonauts into space.

Once again, the Soviet Union beat the U.S. in the space race with the successful launch of the Luna 10 and its consequent orbit around the moon. Soviet engineers planned its orbit to occur at the ...

Both the Soviet Union and United States conducted high-altitude nuclear detonation (HAND) tests in the 1950s and 1960s, including the U.S. Starfish Prime test in 1962 when the United States ...

Oct. 4, 1957: The Soviet Union secretly fires Sputnik 1 into space, making it the world’s first artificial satellite.

On October 20, 1970, the Soviet Union launched the Zond 8 spacecraft on a mission to the moon. This was the last mission in the Zond program. After the first three Zond missions explored Venus and ...

This was published 2 years ago From the Archives, 1957: Cold War intensifies as Russia launches Sputnik A. D. Rothman October 3, 2022 — 12.21pm Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size ...

The Soviet Union makes no attempt to intervene as its satellite regimes fall. December 1989 - Gorbachev and U.S. President George H.W. Bush, at a summit in Malta, hail the end of the Cold War.

When Sputnik was launched on Oct. 4, 1957, the 183-pound gizmo circled Earth's surface once every 98 minutes, transmitting interesting data (by the standards of the 1950s) about various points on ...

Sputnik was a wake-up call for the US: Americans needed to be smarter. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first Earth-orbiting satellite, Sputnik.

Sputnik was a wake-up call for the US: Americans needed to be smarter. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first Earth-orbiting satellite, Sputnik. It was a clear sign to President ...