the united states response to the successful orbit of sputnik in 1957 was to
Sputnik crisis The Sputnik crisis was a period of public fear and anxiety about the perceived technological gap between the United States and Soviet Union caused by the launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet space program.[1] The crisis was a key event in the early Cold War that triggered the creation of NASA and Space Race between the two superpowers. The satellite was launched on October 4, 1957 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The term was coined by then US President Dwight D. Eisenhower.[citation needed]
Satellite Following pressure by the American Rocket Society, the National Science Foundation, and the International Geophysical Year, military interest picked up and in early 1955 the Army and Navy were working on Project Orbiter, two competing programs: the army's which involved using a Jupiter C rocket, and the civilian/Navy Vanguard Rocket, to launch a satellite. At first, they failed: initial preference was given to the Vanguard program, whose first attempt at orbiting a satellite resulted in the explosion of the launch vehicle on national television. But finally, three months after Sputnik 2, the project succeeded; Explorer 1 became the United States' first artificial satellite on 31 January 1958.[14]