Space Race
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between the Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. The competition began on July 29, 1955, when the United States announced its intent to launch artificial satellites, and the Soviet Union responded days later. The USSR achieved the first successful satellite launch with Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, and sent the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space on April 12, 1961. U.S. president John F. Kennedy committed the United States to landing a man on the Moon, a goal achieved in July 1969 with the flight of Apollo 11. The competition gradually gave way to cooperation, culminating in joint programs such as the International Space Station.
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