Soviet space program
The Soviet space program (Russian: Космическая программа СССР, romanized: Kosmicheskaya programma SSSR) was the state space program of the Soviet Union, active from 1951 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Unlike its Space Race competitor, the United States, which consolidated its space program under NASA, the Soviet space program was divided between several competing design bureaus led by Korolev, Kerimov, Keldysh, Yangel, Glushko, Chelomey, Makeyev, Chertok and Reshetnev, often under the Ministry of General Machine-Building.