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The Space Race was a competition between the United States and the USSR in space exploration and technology, and especially to the race between the two nations to land a human being on the moon. Significant events:

• first artificial satellite - Sputnik 1 (1957, USSR)
• first animal in space - Sputnik 2 (USSR)
• first manned spaceflight - Vostok 1 (1961, USSR)
• first orbital flight - Vostok 1 (as above)
• first dual flight (1962, USSR)
• first woman in space - Valentina Tereshkova (1963, USSR)
• first flight with more than one crew member - Voskhod 1 (1964, USSR)
• first spacewalk - Aleksei Leonov on Voskhod 2 (1965, USSR)
• first space rendezvous - Gemini 6/Gemini 7 (1965, USA)
• first space docking - Gemini 8 (1966, USA)
• first spacecraft on moon - Luna 2 (USSR)
• first orbital flight of moon - Apollo 8 (1968, USA)
• first human landing on moon - Apollo 11 (1969, USA)

The Soviets beat the Americans in most firsts, but did not manage to beat them to the moon. Technology and especially aerospace technology advanced greatly during this period. In the sense that it was contested during the 1960s, the space race is usually considered to have been ended by the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975.