The Space Race: A History from Beginning to End (The Cold War)

by Hourly History

In May 1955, the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) reviewed plans for the launch of a satellite. It agreed that being the first nation to launch such a satellite would bring great prestige and would establish the principle of the “freedom of space”—that a country’s sovereign territory did not extend beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. On July 29, 1955, James Hagerty, President Eisenhower’s press secretary, held a press conference at which he announced that the United States would launch a “science satellite” into Earth’s orbit before the end of the International Geophysical Year, which would last from July 1957 to December 1958. Just four days later, on August 2, the Soviet Union responded with a press conference at the International Astronautical Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark at which they announced that “the realization of the Soviet satellite project can be expected in the near future.” With these announcements, the space race had begun.