a rocket launching into the air with smoke coming out of it

Fifty years ago, humans landed on the Moon, a milestone in human history. But how did we get there? It all started after World War II, when the United States and the Soviet Union competed to show the world who was the most powerful nation. This rivalry fueled incredible scientific advances.The United States got the ballistic missile off the ground by launching the first ballistic missile, the V2, and soon after, they managed to take the first photo of Earth from space. But they didn’t stop there. They began sending animals into space to learn how their bodies would react. Unfortunately, many of these animals did not survive.Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, an engineer named Sergei Korolev, who had studied V2 missiles in Germany, brought valuable information to the Soviets. In 1949, the Soviet Union conducted its first successful test of a nuclear bomb, startling the Americans.The space race heated up when, in 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth. Shortly there