In 1955, scientists throughout the world began to focus on a project called the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The IGY was the brainchild of physicist James Van Allen and his colleagues. It was meant to coordinate high-altitude scientific research throughout the world. As part of this effort, the IGY invited participating nations to launch an Earth-orbiting satellite. The United States accepted the invitation on July 29, 1955. The USSR accepted July 30th. From that moment on, the two powers found themselves racing one another into space.
The Soviets' chief rocket designer Sergei Korolev had already developed a plan for creating an Earth-orbiting satellite. When his idea was approved by the Soviet government he was overjoyed. By August 1957, his satellite, Sputnik, was ready for launch.
Things were not running so smoothly in the United States, however. Although Wernher von Braun, the country's leading rocket genius, had already built the Redstone rocket with a powerful first stage for a satellite launch, the Eisenhower administration had passed them over in favor of the Naval Research Laboratory's more complex rocket, Vanguard. President Eisenhower felt that the IGY satellite should not be associated with the military so he chose the Vanguard rocket which had been designed purely for scientific experiments and civilian uses. By the summer of 1957, however, all four of Vanguard's firing tests had failed. Before Sputnik was even launched, it was clear that Vanguard would lose the space race.
The news of Sputnik's success was announced during a small party hosted by the Russian scientists at the Soviet embassy to commemorate the last evening of an IGY conference in Washington, D.C. At the announcement, both Russians and Americans toasted the launch of the first man-made satellite.
On the other side of the globe, Korolev sat proud and relieved. He had waited ninety-three minutes to confirm that his satellite was actually orbiting the Earth before he called an anxious Nikita Khrushchev at the Kremlin. The Soviet leader, satisfied with the report, went to bed dreaming of the next way to demonstrate Soviet superiority.
