The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States led to a Space Race.
The space race was a competition between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted approximately from 1957 to 1975. It involved the parallel effort between the two countries to explore outer space with artificial satellites, to send humans into space and to pose a human being in the Moon.
Although its roots lie in the early rocket technologies and international tensions that followed the Second World War, the space race actually began after the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957. The space race became an important part of the cultural and technological rivalry between the USSR and the United States during the Cold War. Space technology became a particularly important arena in this conflict, both because of its potential military applications and because of its psychological effects on the morale of the population.