Following the disaster, NASA grounded all Shuttles for safety concerns until 1988. In the United States, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986 marked a significant decline in crewed Shuttle launches. Since then, public attention has largely moved to other areas. The landing of Apollo 11 was watched by over 500 million people around the world and is widely recognized as one of the defining moments of the 20th century. The Soviet Union proceeded tentatively with its own lunar landing program which it did not publicly acknowledge, partly due to internal debate over its necessity and the untimely death (in January 1966) of Sergey Korolev, chief engineer of the Soviet space program. From 1961 to 1964, NASA’s budget was increased almost 500 percent, and the lunar landing program eventually involved some 34,000 NASA employees and 375,000 employees of industrial and university contractors. The Space Race reached its peak with the Apollo program that captured the imagination of much of the world's population. Prior to the first attempted human spaceflight, various animals were flown into outer space to identify potential detrimental effects of high g-forces in takeoff and landing, microgravity, and radiation exposure at high altitudes. Eisenhower created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, commonly known as NASA. In 1958 the United States launched its first satellite, Explorer 1. Much of the technology developed for space applications has been spun off and found additional uses, such as memory foam. The race resulted in rapid advances in rocketry, materials science, and other areas. The Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union began in 1957 with the launching of the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1. Weighing 83.6 kg (184.3 lb) and orbiting the Earth once every 98 minutes. The Space Age was an era of new military, political, technological, and scientific developments which began with the Soviet Union's Octolaunch of Earth's first artificial satellite Sputnik 1.
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