Satellites - National Air and Space Museum
Apr 12, 2022 · A satellite is an object that is in orbit around an object in space of a larger size. Things such as the Earth's Moon or Pluto's Charon are natural satellites. Humans have also …
Communications Satellites - National Air and Space Museum
Communications Satellites Close the Gaps By the mid-1960s, communications satellites had become reliable tools. Satellites positioned in high orbits could "see" large swaths of Earth, …
What Was the Space Race? - National Air and Space Museum
Aug 23, 2023 · Both countries made announcements to launch the first artificial satellite into space, but it was the Soviet Union that brought humanity into the Space Age with their Sputnik …
The Space Race: getting to the Moon
The Soviets were quickest off the mark. In October 1957, they sent the first artificial satellite into space, Sputnik 1. One month later, they launched a second satellite, Sputnik 2, carrying a dog …
Space: A Place for Robots - National Air and Space Museum
Jul 31, 2025 · On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, into low Earth orbit. This event signaled to many the beginning of a space race between the …
Sputnik and the Space Age - National Air and Space Museum
Oct 3, 2017 · Sputnik, the world’s first human-made satellite of the Earth, was launched on October 4, 1957, marking the beginning of the Space Age and the modern world in which we …
Saturn - National Air and Space Museum
A natural satellite is a naturally occurring object that is in orbit around an object in space of a larger size. Earth's natural satellite is the Moon, but many objects in our Solar System have …
Mercury | National Air and Space Museum
A natural satellite is a naturally occurring object that is in orbit around an object in space of a larger size. Earth's natural satellite is the Moon, but many objects in our Solar System have …
The Space Race - National Air and Space Museum
Oct 26, 2023 · The Space Race Begins The early years of the Space Race were marked by successes through headline making “firsts”: the first satellite, the first living being in space, the …
Telstar - National Air and Space Museum
Telstar, launched in 1962, was the first active communications satellite: it received microwave signals from ground stations and retransmitted them across vast distances back to Earth.