Description

The beginning of the second half of the twentieth century was marked by man's first space efforts. The millennial aspirations of man to reach the stars are coming true. The Soviet Union blazed the trail into space by launch-ing the first man-made satellites of the Earth, the Sun and the Moon, the first automatic interplanetary stations to the Moon, Venus and Mars, and the first manned spaceships, both single-seaters and multi-seaters. A Soviet cosmonaut performed the world's first walk in open space. Soviet space stations were the first to reach the surface of the Moon and Venus, photograph the far side of the Moon, accomplish a soft landing on the Moon and transmit pictures of the lunar landscape to the Earth. The first trip round the Moon and back to Earth was accomplished by automatic versions of Soviet spaceships. The first men and the first woman to perform single and group flights in space were citizens of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

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