The earth has three main chemical layers: a core, mantle, and crust. these layers formed from a process calll during planetary accretion

The soviet union beat the us to the first successful launch, with the october 4, 1957, orbiting of sputnik 1, and later beat the us to have the first human in earth orbit, yuri gagarin, on april 12, 1961. the "race" peaked with the july 20, 1969, us landing of the first humans on the moon with apollo 11