Space Race

The Space Race was the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, to achieve the first feats of spaceflight. The Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957 and the first person in space, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961; the United States answered with the Apollo programme, which landed astronauts on the Moon in July 1969. The rivalry, a contest of prestige in the Cold War, eased with the joint Apollo–Soyuz mission of 1975.