america and the Soviet Union vigorously competed to push the boundaries of mankind's exploration of area. The Russians scored a victory after they launched a small craft wearing cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin to new heights. His 108-minute flight gave him a permanent area in the history books as the first guy in space.
The race to the stars
With the 1957 launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first manmade satellite tv for pc, the Russians took an early lead in the space race. the next step became to ship a human off the planet.
the yank plan to ship a man into space by way of 1961 created a deadline that the Russian team worked tough to conquer. The improvement of the Vostok spacecraft became paramount. prior to Gagarin’s historic flight, the Soviets despatched a prototype of his spaceship, along side a existence-length dummy known as Ivan Ivanovich and a canine referred to as Zvezdochka. With these successes, the vessel turned into taken into consideration geared up to take a residing, respiration human into space.