Answer :
It
was known as the space race where two competing superpowers raced to
the moon. The USSR had the early lead launching Sputnik and Vostok
programmes including Vostok 1 on which , as of April 12, 1961, Yuri
Gagarin became the first human in space. The USA took the lead with the
Apollo missions and as of July 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first
human on the moon. We can, being very simplistic (perhaps over
simplistic), argue that the space race ended in 1969 when the political
climate changed and the space race was no longer an extension of the
arms race and became about purely scientific exploration. At this point
a greater emphasis on international cooperation rather than competition
resulted in the building of the International Space Station. Now in
the early part of the 21st century a new "space race" has begun with
private companies competing in various directions (asteroid mining,
space tourism and even an ambitious decade long project with aspirations
of putting humans on Mars).