Organization · SSSR · est. 1946
OKB-1 / Soviet space program (today Roscosmos)
The OKB-1 design bureau, led by Sergei Korolev, was behind the R-7 launcher, Sputnik, Vostok, and Soyuz. Predecessor of today's Roscosmos agency.
CountrySSSR
Founded1946
Programs2
People2
PROGRAMS
Vostok programThe Vostok program (1961–1963) was the first Soviet crewed spaceflight program. Six single-seat Vostok craft carried, among others, the first man and the first woman into space.
International Space Station (ISS)Under construction in low Earth orbit since 1998 and continuously inhabited since November 2000, the station is a joint project of five space agencies and the longest continuously operated human-made object in space.
NOTABLE PEOPLE
Sergei Pavlovich KorolevDesignerHe was born on 12 January 1907 in Zhytomyr, Ukraine. Fascinated from an early age by aviation and rocketry, in the 1930s he was among the founders of Moscow’s Group for the Study of Reactive Motion (GIRD). In 1938, at the height of Stalin’s purges, he was arrested, tortured and sentenced to forced labour. He passed through a camp in Kolyma in the far north-east of Siberia and then a “sharashka” — a prison design bureau led by aircraft designer Andrei Tupolev. He was released only in 1944 and fully rehabilitated in 1957. After the war he headed the OKB-1 design bureau, where he developed the R-7 Semyorka — the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile and the launch vehicle that carried Sputnik 1 into orbit on 4 October 1957. There followed Sputnik 2 with the dog Laika, the Luna probes and the crewed Vostok spacecraft, aboard which Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth on 12 April 1961 and, in 1963, the first woman Valentina Tereshkova. The Voskhod programme then produced the first spacewalk (Alexei Leonov, 1965). Korolev’s identity was strictly concealed — Soviet leaders feared for his safety and for the secrecy of the whole programme, so in the West he appeared only as the anonymous “Chief Designer”. He died on 14 January 1966 during surgery, before he could complete his great goal of a crewed flight to the Moon. Only after his death was his role revealed, and he was buried with state honours at the Kremlin Wall.
Yuri Alekseyevich GagarinCosmonaut / AstronautThe first human in space. On 12 April 1961 he orbited the Earth aboard Vostok 1 and became a symbol of the Soviet space program.
KEY EVENTSON TIMELINE →
Oct 1957
Sputnik 1The first artificial satellite of Earth opened the Space Age and kicked off the space race between the USA and the USSR.
Apr 1961
Vostok 1Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human in space and in orbit around the Earth.
Sept 1983
Soyuz T-10-1The date falls outside the main 1957–1975 period and is included here to illustrate the theme of launch escape systems. Two seconds before the launcher exploded on the pad, mission control activated the launch escape system (SAS, the Soviet counterpart to the LES). The crew, Vladimir Titov and Gennadi Strekalov, survived accelerations of roughly 15–17 g without serious injury — still the only real-world use of this type of system in the Soviet/Russian program.