Background
The world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, had been put into orbit by the Soviets in 1957, and this could be considered the beginning of the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States. Both nations wanted to develop their spaceflight technology quickly, and in particular, both wanted to be the first to launch a successful human spaceflight. The Soviet programme for doing this was the Vostok programme. Prior to a manned spaceflight, the Soviets launched several precursor unmanned missions between May 1960 and March 1961, to test and develop the Vostok rocket and Vostok spacecraft technology. These missions had varied success, but the final two unmanned missions—Korabl-Sputnik 4 and Korabl-Sputnik 5—were outright successes, opening the door for a manned flight.
Read more about this topic: Vostok 1
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