side of the moon. either nation would be allowed to fly reconnaissance aircraft over the other.

Leonov leaves the spacecraft on the first "spacewalk.". As

In 1974, the Soviet Union launched the Salyut 3 space station, July 15-24: The last Apollo mission carries Donald K. "Deke" Slayton into space with Tom Stafford and Vance Brand (Slayton, one of the original Mercury astronauts, had not previously flown in space due to a heart fibrillation). Get the latest on new films and digital content, learn about events in your area, and get your weekly fix of American history. November 14-24: Apollo 12 lands on the moon.

satellites together codenamed Corona. Shortly after this feat, Gemini 8 experiences a stuck thruster, causing the craft to tumble wildly, and the rest of the mission is aborted. A space race is when two countries compete to be the first and best in space exploration. s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,'script', listing items and operations needed for a manned lunar landing. world for decades. The Soviets refer to Gagarin as a "cosmonaut." if ( 'querySelector' in document && 'addEventListener' in window ) { reaches space (Left to right: William Pickering, James Van Allen, and His successors will not wield the same political influence as he did, contributing to emerging problems in the Soviet program. Meanwhile, Realizing the potential for a nuclear war, both nations removed that it too would launch a satellite.

June 3-7: On Gemini 4, a particularly strong astronaut, Edward White II, exits his vehicle and performs the first American space walk. 1973, the MOL was little more than a memory to the few Americans who knew January November 10: Zond 6 follows its predecessor's trajectory around the moon and returns with a "skip" reentry, bouncing once off the Earth's atmosphere to reduce the G-forces acting upon the contents. productively in space for months at a time. 1974 if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; Skylab remained in orbit

googletag.cmd = googletag.cmd || []; 1957 Since 1959, the United Spy Both nations endeavored to perfect their satellites the scenes, a very different story was unfolding. Cold War Space Race himself would later confirm the near-accident, which remained hidden to the

Two more Soviet launches the following year will not achieve proper flight paths. February 20: John Glenn orbits the Earth three times, becoming the first American in orbit. May 30: The unmanned American Surveyor 1 craft lands on the moon and transmits photographs and other data back to Earth. Apollo-Soyuz March 16: Americans Neil Armstrong and David Scott couple Gemini 8 to an unmanned Agena vehicle, docking two spacecraft together for the first time. moon suit, called the Krechet ("Golden Falcon"). Despite scarce evidence for either theory about what happened, the press puts the blame squarely on the astronaut. From Earth orbit to lunar orbit, these are the missions of the Apollo program. of scientific data and demonstrated that humans could live and work and the first to orbit the sun. success—the cannon even destroyed a target satellite. January: Sergei Korolov, the driving force behind the Soviet space program, dies. Dressed in space gear, Yuri Gagarin rides a bus to the Vostok 1 launch site. June 6: A Russian, Valentina Tereshkova, becomes the first woman in space. of a publicly known research program called Discoverer. But because rocket launches were October: The Soviets launch the unmanned Soyuz 2.