Reconnaissance Missions
Although the USSR had sent more satellites to space than America had, scientists in the U.S. had been working on a top-priority reconnaissance program that would fly over the Soviet Union and take pictures. President Eisenhower authorized a joint effort between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the United States Air Force to carry out this program. The CIA named the reconnaissance satellite “Corona” and to hide what they were doing, they created the cover name of “Discoverer” which was purported to be a “scientific research program.” Within a short period of time, “more than 100 Corona missions took 800,000 photographs,” of the USSR (“Discoverer/Corona: First U.S. Reconnaissance Satellite”). Lagging two years
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On one hand, the desire to be the first superpower in space became a catalyst to new technological development in America and in Russia. The citizens of both countries were inspired to achieve greatness. On the other hand, an arms race developed between these two superpowers which turned into The Cold War. With the Space Race, each country struggled to outmaneuver the other in space exploration; first, the goal was to orbit the earth, then it was to get to the moon, then it was to go beyond the moon, later it was to land humans on the moon, and the final goal was cooperative space exploration with the creation of the ISS.. With the Cold War, each country struggled to outmaneuver each other by developing multiple types of missiles, and reconnaissance satellites. The ability to develop these missiles and satellites was a result of the new technology that made it possible to land a man on the moon. Deadly weapons such as ballistic and cruise missiles were developed and both superpowers lived with a real psychological burden of the threat of nuclear war. The two superpowers were so distrustful of each other that they launched many reconnaissance satellites, disguised as scientific discovery missions, in order to know what kinds of weapons were being developed. And thus, the cold war took an interesting turn, but did not