Race to Space!

Here are the efforts to find out what Nations across the world are doing to lead in the race to space!

For many years, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in a fierce competition—the space race. The space race began in 1957 when the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik. The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and the American presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon all agreed that conquering outer space was very important. Both countries wanted to win—to prove their scientific superiority and to show their military strength. Soviet Premier Khrushchev wanted to show that communist technology was superior. President Kennedy wanted to beat the Soviets to the moon. The European Space Agency is investigating spaceships to carry astronauts. China is laying the groundwork for a moon shot. Even India plans to send its own astronauts into space.

Over the years, many nations have utilized a great deal of resources to explore the mysteries of the universe and creating their own way in the space race. Nations that are making progress toward putting humans in the orbit and participating in the space race:

The European Space Agency: The 17-member agency plans a March inaugural liftoff of a spaceship carrying supplies to the station. The ship could be the basis for a capsule that
would carry humans, says Alan Thirkettle, chief of the European agency's space-station program. The capsule or something like it would be designed to take astronauts to the moon.

China: It lofted humans into space in 2003 and 2005. It's likely to try a fall mission that would
feature the first Chinese spacewalk. China also plans to send humans to the moon in roughly
2025, as stated by Vincent Sabathier, who studies global space policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. There is "huge public support" in China for a moon mission. But, NASA hopes to return astronauts to the moon in 2020.

India: Our country blasted into the international space race with the successful launch of an ambitious two-year mission, Chandrayan-1. Packed with an international suite of science instruments, the orbiter is headed to the moon. Besides this, India is already the proud owner of a rocket capable of carrying a human crew and spacecraft into space. Last year, Indian engineers sent a small unmanned capsule to orbit and recovered it back on Earth. G. Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, stated in Washington that his agency has drawn up plans to develop a human spacecraft. He expects "no major hurdles" to obtain funding.

Japan: A Japanese laboratory will be delivered to the space station as early as March, and a
Japanese robotic cargo ship is scheduled to make its first trip to the station later this year. Japan will handle their day-to-day operations, the first time it has been in charge of spacecraft with humans aboard or nearby. Japan's new space policy calls for it to be ready to send humans to space in 20 years.

SPACE TERMS:
In the United States, astronaut is derived from the Greek words ástron (star) and nautis (sailor). While, in Russia, a space traveler goes by the name космонавт (English: cosmonaut),
which is derived from the Greek words kosmos (universe) and nautis (sailor). Westerners call a space traveler from China a taikonaut, based on the 1998 writings of Chiew Lee Yik and Chen Lan where the term tàikōng (great emptiness), Chinese for “space”. In China, the term yuháng yuán (universe navigator) is used for space traveler.