The 

Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War adversaries, the Soviet

Union (USSR) and the United States of America (USA), to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It
had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the two nations
following World War II. The technological advantage demonstrated by spaceflight achievement was
seen as necessary for national security, and became part of the symbolism and ideology of the time.
The Space Race brought pioneering launches of artificial satellites, robotic space probes to
the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and ultimately to the Moon.[1]
The competition began in earnest on August 2, 1955, when the Soviet Union responded to the US
announcement four days earlier of intent to launch artificial satellites for the International
Geophysical Year, by declaring they would also launch a satellite "in the near future". The
developments in ballistic missile capabilities made it possible to take the competition between the
two states into space.[2] This competition gained public attention with the "Sputnik shock", when the
USSR achieved the first successful artificial satellite launch on October 4, 1957 of Sputnik 1, and
subsequently when the USSR sent the first human to space with the orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin on
April 12, 1961. The USSR demonstrated an early lead in the race with these and other firsts over the
next few years,[3] reaching the Moon for the first time with the Luna programme by employing robotic
missions.
After US president John F. Kennedy raised the stakes by setting a goal of "landing a man on the
Moon and returning him safely to the Earth".[4] both countries worked on developing super heavy-lift
launch vehicles, with the US successfully deploying the Saturn V, which was large enough to send a
three-person orbiter and two-person lander to the Moon. Kennedy's Moon landing goal was achieved
in July 1969, with the flight of Apollo 11,[5][6][7] a singular achievement generally overshadowing any
combination of Soviet achievements and often seen as the decisive achievement of the Space Race.
[8]
 The USSR pursued two crewed lunar programs, but did not succeed with their N1 rocket to launch
and land on the Moon before the US, and eventually canceled it to concentrate on Salyut, the
first space station programme, and the first time landings on Venus and on Mars. Meanwhile the US
landed five more Apollo crews on the Moon[9] and continued exploration of other extraterrestrial
bodies robotically.
A period of détente followed with the April 1972 agreement on a co-operative Apollo–Soyuz Test
Project (ASTP), resulting in the July 1975 rendezvous in Earth orbit of a US astronaut crew with a
Soviet cosmonaut crew and joint development of an international docking standard APAS-75. Being
considered as the final act of the Space Race,[8] the competition would only gradually be replaced
with cooperation.[10] The collapse of the Soviet Union eventually allowed the US and the newly
founded Russian Federation to end their Cold War competition also in space, by agreeing in 1993 on
the Shuttle–Mir and International Space Station programs.[11][12]