Soviet space program

Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin—the first person in outer space 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.