The Soviet Union had no single space agency. Its program was run through government ministries and competing design bureaus, most famously the bureau led by chief designer Sergei Korolev.
It achieved many of spaceflight’s firsts: Sputnik, the first satellite, in 1957; Luna 2, the first spacecraft to reach the Moon, in 1959; Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, in 1961; Luna 9, the first soft landing on the Moon, in 1966; and Venera 7, the first landing on another planet, on Venus in 1970. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, most of its space program passed to Russia.
Key facts
3 missions tracked