Most Americans know how the space
race began: with the 1957 launch of Sputnik by the U.S.S.R. But fewer remember
how it all but ended: a 1975 mission in which an Apollo spacecraft docked with
its Soviet counterpart in low Earth orbit.
Historians view that flight as a
turning point, paving the way for the U.S. and Russia to team up decades later
to build the International Space Station.
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“We
don’t start with Mars. We start with space science and build our way up from
that,” said Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Stimson Center, a
Washington-based think tank that examines global peace and security issues.
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