April, 1961, Soviet became the first nation to put human into orbit. Vostok-1 spacecraft first ever took human, Yuri Gagarin into space. Vostok became the first man made object that could put human beyond the atmosphere .Several months later, US joined the human space flight with successful Mercury Redstone flight, which took Alan Shepard into a suborbital flight. Both Mercury & Vostok carried out 6 space flight. Vostok made several records while US involved in making more reliable & payload capability launcher. Soon, US came out with Gemini program which ran from 1961 to 1966. Gemini proved to be complete package for achieving various targets needed for manned lunar landings. By the time Soviet became mastered in robotic space missions including Luna series, which recorded several “ First “ in history of space exploration. A new variant of Vostok spacecraft, Voskhod was evolved for carrying more than one crew, however made only two launches with one space walk. With stunning success of Gemini project, US became the mastered in space exploration & involved designing giant Saturn V launcher needed to lift off the command & lunar module from the launch pad.
with a hope to win the space race, Soviets soon became involved in designing a super heavy booster comparable to Saturn V. the enormous N1 rocket was littile bit smaller than Saturn V and had less payload capability. A total of 4 out of 12 launches took place, all of which were failure. Even , the launchers exploded before reaching the orbit, creating one of the huge man made explosions in history. With the success of Saturn V-Apollo 11 landing, Soviet eventually lost the manned moon race further completely.
Soviets Lost Dream To Moon