Reaching for the Stars

On 20 July 2019, exactly 50 years will have passed since the first man set foot on the moon. To this day, only the United States has completed successful manned missions there. They sealed its victory over the then Soviet Union in the Space Race, which had begun in the mid1950s between the two Cold War superpowers. In the early years, however, the Soviet Union had been in the lead: In 1957 Sputnik 1 became the first satellite to go into orbit around the Earth; in 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first person to travel into space. That rivalry has since given way to co-operation. The International Space Station is a project run by the space agencies of the US, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada. Scientists from around the world come together up there to conduct experiments.