The
Soviet space program comprised the
rocketry and
space exploration programs conducted by the former
Soviet Union (USSR) from the 1930s until
its dissolution in 1991. Over its sixty-year history, this primarily
classified military program was responsible for a number of pioneering accomplishments in space flight, including the first
intercontinental ballistic missile (
R-7), first satellite (
Sputnik-1), first animal in
Earth orbit (the dog
Laika on
Sputnik 2), first human in space and Earth orbit (
cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on
Vostok 1), first woman in space and Earth orbit (
cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova on
Vostok 6), first
spacewalk (
cosmonaut Alexey Leonov on
Voskhod 2), first
Moon impact (
Luna 2), first image of the far side of the moon (
Luna 3) and unmanned lunar soft landing (
Luna 9), first
space rover (
Lunokhod 1), first sample of
lunar soil automatically extracted and brought to Earth (
Luna 16), and first
space station (
Salyut 1). Further notable records included the last
interplanetary probes:
Venera 1 and
Mars 1 to fly by
Venus and
Mars, respectively,
Venera 3 and
Mars 2 to impact the respective planet surface, and
Venera 7 and
Mars 3 to make soft landings on these planets.