![]() 11, 1968, NASA launched its first Apollo astronauts into space aboard a Saturn I rocket for the 11-day Apollo 7 mission. was widely considered the winner of the space race. NASA's successful Apollo program meant the U.S. Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong took the photo. But that catastrophic failure generated extensive redesigns of the spacecraft and a commitment to ensuring that the crew did not die in vain.Īpollo 11 lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin stands on the moon near the American flag during NASA's historic first manned moon landing on July 20, 1969. 27, 1967, when all three astronauts in the Apollo 1 capsule were killed during a launch rehearsal test that sparked a huge fire. The program got off to a horrific start on Jan. Following the achievements of the crewed Mercury and Gemini programs, NASA engineers embarked on a series of missions to place human footprints on the moon. Other nations launched their own rockets and satellites, including Canada in 1962, France in 1965, and Japan and China in 1970.īut these countries' successes were mere sideshows in what came to be the main event of the space race: NASA's Apollo program. The Soviets sent the first woman into space, Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963 (a feat that would take the U.S. The Americans achieved the first interplanetary flyby when Mariner 2 sped past Venus in 1962, followed by the first Mars flyby in 1965 with Mariner 4. Over the next few years, each side in the space race took several other firsts. A few months later, at Rice University in Texas, Kennedy delivered his famous " Moon Speech," where he said, "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." Who won the space race? Kennedy stood before legislators in Congress and announced that he had committed NASA to landing people on the moon before the end of the decade. A major turning point in the space race occurred that same month, when U.S.
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