Happy birthday, @NASA! To mark the 57th year since the #space agency’s official start, here’s a photo of #NASA #astronaut Donald K. "Deke" Slayton (right) and #Russian #cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, an unlikely space #mission duo on the surface. But #Russia was, of course, a driving force behind the formation of NASA. It was the orbit around the #Earth by the Russian #satellite #Sputnik in 1957 that sparked the #SpaceRace, engaging the United States and the then-Soviet Union in fierce competition for global supremacy in space #technology. But it was a rivalry that eventually dwindled, and in July 1975 NASA astronauts were launched into space to meet Russian cosmonauts in orbit to show that two dissimilar #spacecraft could join up. #photooftheday #science #cosmos #spaceexploration #history #sciencehistory 📷: NASA