The Sputnik crisis was a period of public fear and anxiety in Western nations about the perceived technological gap between the United States and Soviet Union caused by the Soviets' launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first See more

The Soviets used ICBM technology to launch Sputnik into space, which gave them two propaganda advantages over the US at once: the … See more

The media stirred a moral panic by writing sensational pieces on the event. In the first and second days following the event, The New York Times wrote … See more

• International Geophysical Year
• New Math
• Timeline of events in the Cold War See more

In the early 1950s, Lockheed U-2 spy plane flights over the Soviet Union provided intelligence that the US held the advantage in nuclear capability. However, an education gap … See more

Five days after the launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, US President Dwight Eisenhower addressed the American people. … See more

United States
The week after Sputnik went up, we were digging ourselves out of this avalanche of money that suddenly descended.— John Jefferies, at High Altitude Observatory in 1957
The launch spurred … See more