ABSTRACT
The programs which launched the first artificial earth satellites were conducted by the Soviet Union and the United States during the second half of the 1950s, within the overall framework of the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The IGY was an ambitious international undertaking, comprising a network of planet-wide geophysical studies, which was proposed in 1950 and carried out in 1957-1958. Sixtyseven national scientific teams, from countries with widely dissimilar political systems and levels of economic development, participated in different ways and to differing degrees. In view of the generally hostile relations between the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and those of the Warsaw Treaty (signed only two years before the opening of the IGY) it is particularly remarkable that nearly all the members of the two rival alliances took part in the Year, and that the two nuclear superpowers led the way in this cooperation, in spite (or perhaps because?) of the fact that many of the scientific topics to be studied were of considerable miHtary as well as scientific significance.
