After the USSR opened he space age by launching its first Earth Satellite in 1957, the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), now the International Science Council (ISC), established its Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) during an international meeting in London in 1958. COSPAR promotes scientific research in space at an international level, with emphasis on the exchange of results, information, and opinions, and provides a forum, open to all scientists. We endeavor to ensure that a vibrant international space research effort can be conducted without impediment from geopolitical tensions or differences. In its first years of existence COSPAR, as an entity that ignores political considerations and views all questions solely from the scientific standpoint, played an important role as an open bridge between East and West for cooperation in space. When this role became less prominent with the decline in rivalry between the two blocs, COSPAR, as an interdisciplinary scientific organization, focused its objectives on the progress of all kinds of research carried out with the use of space.