The Space Race began in the 20th century, immediately after the second world war. The race was a competition between two nation-states, the Soviet Union and the United States, where the first human to land on the moon would be considered the winner - the two nations competed to prove their supremacy of intellect thinking, and technological innovation (“Space Race Timeline”).
The United States won the space race when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon before the Soviet Union. When he landed, he said the famous and iconic phrase “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” which wouldn’t have been heard on Earth if the technology wasn’t as advanced as it was. Fortunately, the saying was heard by more than 600 million people on Earth,
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When rockets and spaceflights leave Earth and leave gravity behind, most fuel tanks become an unnecessary and useless weight for the spacecraft. Hence, astronauts often dispose of them in space which then becomes “space debris.” Moreover, other examples of “space debris” are broken and useless equipment, old satellites, and boosters that help the rockets escape the gravitational pull from the Earth (“Space Exploration: The Negative Effects Of The Space Race | ipl.org”). Thereby, space debris even affects the environment on Earth by releasing compositional chemicals into the air. These chemicals can also potentially use up the supply of ozone which can negatively affect humans as it can cause an increase in the UV radiation levels at the surface of the Earth, leading to possible damage to human health (“Protecting the ozone layer”). Additionally, the debris is also a peril to future space exploration and launches (Staughton). However, in order to clean up all the space debris, a “spacecraft claw” was created. This highly-advanced robotic claw with four fingers has been designed to capture objects one at a time in space (Andrews). To be more specific, the name of this entire mission is “Clearspace-1” and the claw works by targeting space junk like the “Vespa payload adapter,” using the fingers to tightly grasp onto the object and last but not least, returning back to Earth