Soviet space program

The Soviet space program (Russian: Космическая программа СССР, romanized: Kosmicheskaya programma SSSR) was the state space program of the Soviet Union, active from 1951 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Unlike its Space Race competitor, the United States, which consolidated its space program under NASA, the Soviet space program was divided between several competing design bureaus led by Korolev, Kerimov, Keldysh, Yangel, Glushko, Chelomey, Makeyev, Chertok and Reshetnev, often under the Ministry of General Machine-Building. The program was an important part of the Soviet claim to superpower status. From the 1890s, Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky pioneered the fields of astronautics and rocketry. Soviet rocketry began with the Gas Dynamics Laboratory in 1921, and these endeavors expanded during the 1930s and 1940s. After the surrender of Nazi Germany, German V-2 rocket technology and expertise was utilized by Soviet and by US aerospace alike; Soviet spaceflight began with the derivative R-1 missile tests in 1948. In the 1950s, the Soviet program was formalized, led by Sergei Korolev. The Soviet space program set many records in space exploration. In 1957, it achieved the first intercontinental missile (R-7 "Semyorka"), orbital launch vehicle (Sputnik), artificial satellite (Sputnik 1), and animal in Earth orbit (Laika the dog). From 1961, the Vostok and Voskhod programs achieved the first human spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin), woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova), multi-crew spaceflight, and spacewalk. Cancelled Soviet crewed lunar programs centered on the N1 super heavy-lift rocket. The Salyut program (1971–1986) operated six crewed space stations, including the world's first, Salyut 1. The first modular station, Mir (1986–2000), grew to seven pressurized modules. The Interkosmos program sent the first citizens of sixteen countries into space. The Energia super heavy-lift rocket and Buran spaceplane, a response to the US Space Shuttle, were briefly flown in the late 1980s. Soviet...