The Space Age is a period of technology development in which the resource is outer space itself. Space Age can be defined as beginning with launch of Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957, from this point on, organised and prolonged activity in space become possible. Launching of Sputnik 1 proved that man-made devices could operate in space long enough to perform useful scientific investigations. Some people think that Space Age is a term applied to a short era of space exploration that culminated in the landing of a man on the Moon.In terms of the 'Ages of Man', we are still in the Space Age and will remain so as long as spacecraft continue to be launched into space.

This chapter presents the major development in the history of space science satellite. These discoveries were necessary to develop spacecraft technology in a fast-track manner. Spacecraft electronics, particularly, has developed apace since the late 1950s, both stimulating and benefiting from parallel developments in terrestrial electronics. Improvements in the capacity and reliability of electronics subsystems have allowed an increase in spacecraft complexity and lifetime, while continual reductions in the size of components has meant that payloads of greater complexity can be shoe-horned into ever smaller volumes.

A transmission received from any point on the hemisphere could be broadcast to the whole of the visible face of the globe. Now that satellite communications is an accepted commercial application of space technology, embedded within the global communications infrastructure, it is difficult to appreciate that, in the early 1960s, it was largely an experimental technology. In common with space science and Earth observation, communications was just another space application with its own dedicated proponents striving to earn its wings. However, once the pictures of large areas of the planet began to be beamed down from weather satellites, it must have become clear to even the most sceptical that placing a communications transponder on a spaceborne platform had undeniable advantages for global communications.

This chapter looks on the development of manned space flight. It features the development of Sputnik 1 of the Soviet Union and the Project Mercury, the first human space flight program of the United State.

If the Apollo programme had been designed simply to transport three astronauts to lunar orbit, allow them to conduct remote observations of its surface and return them to Earth, it would have been an historic feat of technological development in the 1960s. But President Kennedy had set an even more impressive goal, which involved a landing, and this was the function of the lunar module. The Apollo 11 lunar module, the first manned spacecraft to land on the Moon, made its touchdown in the Sea of Tranquillity on 20 July 1969. Although several decades have passed since that historic event, and many subsequent developments in space technology have taken place, the effort required to place men on the surface of the Moon and return them safely to the Earth set a precedent in engineering excellence that is hard to match even today.

The early years of the Space Age, from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, are seen by many as the 'Golden Age' of space exploration, chiefly because the period saw such incredible advances in space technology and culminated in the landing of men on the Moon. By the end of the 1960s, all of the technology necessary to send unmanned spacecraft to the planets and astronauts to our nearest astronomical neighbour had been designed, developed and successfully flown in space... and it had been done in little more than a decade. While the race for the Moon provided a boost to many aspects of space technology, there were other social, political and technical reasons for space-related development, as previous chapters have attempted to show. This chapter draws those strands of technological heritage together and looks at the broader effects of space technology on our culture.