Intercontinental ballistic missile in the context of "Ground-Based Interceptor"

The Space Race (Russian: космическая гонка, romanized: kosmicheskaya gonka, IPA: [kɐsˈmʲitɕɪskəjə ˈɡonkə]) was a 20th-century competition between the Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the two nations following World War II and the onset of the Cold War. The technological advantage demonstrated by spaceflight achievement was seen as necessary for national security, particularly in regard to intercontinental ballistic missile and satellite reconnaissance capability, but also became part of the cultural symbolism and ideology of the time. The Space Race brought pioneering launches of artificial satellites, robotic landers to the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and ultimately to the Moon.

Public interest in space travel originated in the 1951 publication of a Soviet youth magazine and was promptly picked up by US magazines. The competition began on July 29, 1955, when the United States announced its intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year. Five days later, the Soviet Union responded by declaring they would also launch a satellite "in the near future". The launching of satellites was enabled by developments in ballistic missile capabilities since the end of World War II. The competition gained Western public attention with the "Sputnik crisis", when the USSR achieved the first successful satellite launch, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957. It gained momentum when the USSR sent the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space with the orbital flight of Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. These were followed by a string of other firsts achieved by the Soviets over the next few years.

A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched. Hence, it will not complete one orbital revolution, will not become an artificial satellite nor will it reach escape velocity.

For example, the path of an object launched from Earth that reaches the Kármán line (about 83 km [52 mi] – 100 km [62 mi] above sea level), and then falls back to Earth, is considered a sub-orbital spaceflight. Some sub-orbital flights have been undertaken to test spacecraft and launch vehicles later intended for orbital spaceflight. Other vehicles are specifically designed only for sub-orbital flight; examples include crewed vehicles, such as the X-15 and SpaceShipTwo, and uncrewed ones, such as ICBMs and sounding rockets.

The militarisation of space involved the placement and development of weaponry and military technology in outer space. The early exploration of space in the mid-20th century had, in part, a military motivation, as the United States and the Soviet Union used it as an opportunity to demonstrate ballistic-missile technology and other technologies having the potential for military application. Outer space has since been used as an operating location for military spacecraft such as imaging and communications satellites, and some ballistic missiles pass through outer space during their flight. As of 2018, known deployments of weapons stationed in space include only the Almaz space-station armament and pistols such as the TP-82 Cosmonaut survival pistol (for post-landing, pre-recovery use).

Soyuz-U (GRAU index: 11A511U) was a Soviet and later Russian expendable medium-lift launch vehicle designed by the TsSKB design bureau and constructed at the Progress factory in Samara, Russia. The U designation stands for unified, as the launch vehicle was the replacement for the Voskhod rocket and several earlier Soyuz rocket variants. The Soyuz-U is part of the larger R-7 rocket family, which evolved from the R-7 Semyorka, the first intercontinental ballistic missile.

The first Soyuz-U flight took place on 18 May 1973, carrying as its payload Kosmos 559, a Zenit military surveillance satellite. The final flight of a Soyuz-U rocket took place on 22 February 2017, carrying Progress MS-05 to the International Space Station.

Nuclear weapons delivery is the technology and systems used to place a nuclear weapon at the position of detonation, on or near its target. All nine nuclear states have developed some form of medium- to long-range delivery system for their nuclear weapons. Alongside improvement of weapons, their development and deployment played a key role in the nuclear arms race.

Strategic nuclear weapons are intended primarily as part of a doctrine of deterrence by threatening large targets, such as cities or military installations. These are generally delivered by some combination of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, sea-based submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and air-based strategic bombers carrying gravity bombs or cruise missiles. The possession of all three is known as a nuclear triad.

Project Emily was the deployment of American-built Thor intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) in the United Kingdom between 1959 and 1963. Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command operated 60 Thor missiles, dispersed to 20 RAF air stations, as part of the British nuclear deterrent.

Due to concerns over the buildup of Soviet missiles, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower met Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in Bermuda in March 1957 to explore the possibility of short-term deployment of IRBMs in the United Kingdom until the long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) were deployed. The October 1957 Sputnik crisis caused this plan to be expedited. The first Thor missile arrived in the UK on a Douglas C-124 Globemaster II transport aircraft in August 1958, and was delivered to the RAF in September.

The Vostok programme (/ˈvɒstɒk, vɒˈstɒk/ VOST-ok, vost-OK; Russian: Восток, IPA: [vɐˈstok] , lit. 'East') was a Soviet human spaceflight project to put the first Soviet cosmonauts into low Earth orbit and return them safely. Competing with the United States Project Mercury, it succeeded in placing the first human into space, Yuri Gagarin, in a single orbit in Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. The Vostok capsule was developed from the Zenit spy satellite project, and its launch vehicle was adapted from the existing R-7 Semyorka intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) design. The name "Vostok" was treated as classified information until Gagarin's flight was first publicly disclosed to the world press.

The programme carried out six crewed spaceflights between 1961 and 1963. The longest flight lasted nearly five days, and the last four were launched in pairs, one day apart. This exceeded Project Mercury's demonstrated capabilities of a longest flight of just over 34 hours, and of single missions.

A nuclear triad is a three-pronged military force structure of global-range land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and strategic bombers with nuclear bombs and missiles. More broadly, it can sometimes be used to mean any nuclear force with land, sea, and air basing, and more limited range. Countries build nuclear triads to eliminate an enemy's ability to destroy a nation's nuclear forces in a first-strike attack, which preserves their own ability to launch a second strike and therefore increases their nuclear deterrence.

Three countries are known to have a global-range triad: the United States, Russia, and China. While the US and the USSR (the predecessor state to Russia) acquired triads as part of the Cold War's nuclear arms race, operationalizing SLBMs during the 1960s, China achieved a viable triad in 2020 with its JL-1 air-launched ballistic missile.

A ballistic missile is a type of missile that follows a ballistic trajectory and is powered only during a relatively brief initial period—most of the flight is unpowered. Short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) typically stay within the Earth's atmosphere, while most larger missiles travel outside the atmosphere. The type of ballistic missile with the greatest range is an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The largest ICBMs are capable of full orbital flight.

These missiles are in a distinct category from cruise missiles, which are aerodynamically guided in powered flight and thus restricted to the atmosphere.

A submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) is a ballistic missile capable of being launched from submarines. Modern variants usually deliver multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), each of which carries a nuclear warhead and allows a single launched missile to strike several targets. Submarine-launched ballistic missiles operate in a different way from submarine-launched cruise missiles.

Modern submarine-launched ballistic missiles are closely related to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), with ranges of over 5,500 kilometres (3,000 nmi), and in many cases SLBMs and ICBMs may be part of the same family of weapons.