One could be forgiven for thinking that the space race was between the USSR and the USA, and that the USSR were the first to initiate the race.
But it was in fact the Germans who on this day 75 years ago ,sent the first man-made object to reach outer space.
The test launch of the MW 18014 ,a German A-4/V-2 rocket took place on 20 June 1944. It attained an apoapsis(The point of a body’s elliptical orbit about the system’s center of mass where the distance between the body and the center of mass is at its maximum) of 176 kilometers
MW 18014 was part of a series of vertical test launches conducted in June 1944, in Peenemunde, designed to gauge the rocket’s behavior in vacuum. MW 18014 broke the altitude record set by one of its predecessors to attain an apoapsis of 176 km.
It was the first man-made object to cross the 100 km Kármán Line, which is the currently accepted boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. About 20 months later on October 24,1946 the US Air force took the first photo taken of Earth from outer space. with a camera mounted on an adapted V2 rocket.
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