The Soviet success caused public controversy in the United States, and Eisenhower ordered the civilian rocket and satellite project, Vanguard, to move up its timetable and launch its satellite much sooner than originally planned. The December 6, 1957 Project Vanguard launch failure occurred at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, broadcast live in front of a US television audience. It was a monumental failure, exploding a few seconds after launch, and it became an international joke. The satellite appeared in newspapers under the names Flopnik, Stayputnik, Kaputnik, and Dudnik. In the United Nations, the Russian delegate offered the U.S. representative aid "under the Soviet program of technical assistance to backwards nations." Only in the wake of this very public failure did von Braun's Redstone team get the go-ahead to launch their Jupiter-C rocket as soon as they could. In Britain, the USA's Western Cold War ally, the reaction was mixed: some members of the population celebrated the fact that the Soviets had reached space first, while others feared the destructive potential that military uses of spacecraft might bring.

The civilian rocket and satellite project in the US was called what?