Answer to Question #166882 in History for william

Question

What did the US government do to respond to the Americans to the launch of Sputnik 1?

Answer 1

US Response to Sputnik Launch

Sputnik refers to an artificial satellite that the Soviet Union launched into space as a sign of the cold war against the United States after the end of world war two(Zelenyi & Zakutnyaya, 2017). It was like a battle of technology supremacy between the United States and the Soviet Union to test who would land on the moon first(Ryan & Keeley, 2017). The United States thereafter responded to the Sputnik launch a year later by creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration which turned missiles into launch vehicles to strengthen America’s s civilian space effort (Zelenyi & Zakutnyaya, 2017). To effectively engage the Soviet Union in the newly adopted cold war and the space race, United States secretly created a secret spy satellite named CORONA that could identify the locations of all Soviet missiles.

 

Reference

Ryan, A., & Keeley, G. (2017). Sputnik and US Intelligence: The Warning Record. Studies in Intelligence, 61(3).

Zelenyi, L., & Zakutnyaya, O. (2017). The" simplest satellite" that opened up the universe: Sputnik 1 was launched 60 years ago to win a political space race, but its legacy is collaborative explorations far beyond Earth. American Scientist, 105(5), 282-290.