when was the space race

The Space Race was a Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It began on August 2, 1955, when the Soviet Union responded to the U.S. announcement of intent to launch artificial satellites. The Space Race is often marked as starting with the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, on October 4, 1957. It ended symbolically on July 20, 1969, when the U.S. Apollo 11 mission successfully landed astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, with Armstrong becoming the first human to step onto its surface. This event is widely seen as the climax and victory of the Space Race for the United States. Following the Moon landing, the Space Race de-escalated and eventually transitioned into cooperation, exemplified by the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, the first joint spaceflight between the two countries. The Space Race was essentially over by the early 1970s, with the Cold War space rivalry officially ending in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.