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Sputnik And The Cold War Essay

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Jennifer Slosarik Konopka U.S. History 2- Period 1 31 May 2015 Sputnik and The Cold War The creation of rockets into space, such as Sputnik, marked a change in the world of technology and brought about a new generation of discoveries. This new generation that sparked was known as the Space Age. The launching of Sputnik by the Soviets caused America to worry that they may be falling behind in technology, and also that they may now be vulnerable to attacks by enemy weapons placed in space. Sputnik 1 was created by Mikhail Tikhonravov, along with a group of other scientists who assisted him. It was the very first artificial satellite to ever be launched into space, and orbit the earth on October 4th, 1957. According to several scientists who took part in the creation of Sputnik, it was actually a smaller, more scaled back version of the rocket they originally had hoped to launch. Although a compromise, Sputnik is still seen as a great accomplishment. The scientists created it in the form of a sphere, and filled it …show more content…

Sputnik 2 was launched on November 3rd, 1957, this time orbiting Earth’s atmosphere for almost two-hundred days. Unlike the original Sputnik, which was shaped like a sphere, the new satellite was shaped like a cone. This aircraft however was not sent up empty, this time it carried a living creature. Onboard Sputnik 2 was a small dog named Laika, who is known as the first living individual in space. There was no possible way to return Laika safely back to Earth, which is why she died, an estimated, two days after she entered space inside the spacecraft. Although the plan was never to bring back Laika, they wanted to test if a living creature could survive the journey into space. Sending her up and seeing that she survived showed that someone could in fact survive the trip into orbit. This in turn foreshadowed a human being making the trip to

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