50 Years After Sputnik, a New Space Frontier.

The space age begins its next 50 years this week, with the United States poised atop an unsettled pyramid of spacefaring nations.

It was a different situation when the space era opened with a shock to the nation 50 years ago Thursday. The jolt came as a missile rose from a secretive test site deep in the Soviet Union. Mounted atop was Sputnik 1, the world's first man-made satellite. [...]

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