The French–US space research cooperation in the early 1960s

This paper proposes to discuss space research cooperation between France and the United States as it existed at the beginning of the 1960s.Among NASA's missions, when created in 1958, was to conduct a policy of international cooperation. Great Britain and Canada responded rapidly to the NASA's proposals.With France, however, the situation was quite different. At that time, Paris wanted to develop large scale space research activities of its own.For this purpose, in January 1959, the French government created the “Comite´ des Recherches Spatiales”, which had two missions: to organize the space research in France and to participate in international space affairs. Although French research at that time was sufficiently advanced in sounding rockets and military missiles to develop a program whose objective was to create a national launcher, France's scientists did not really have enough experience in satellite design, unlike most other countries involved in space research during this period.At this time, several cooperative programs were initiated between France and the United States, in fields such as rocket experiments, visual observation satellites and satellites tracking. However, the first major cooperative program between the two countries concerned the development of a scientific satellite—later known as FR-1— which was launched in December 1965. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]