Soviet space program
- id: AGY-005
- country: Soviet Union
- confidence: believed-correct
The Soviet space program — modeled here as a single record, though it was in truth a constellation of design bureaus under state direction — opened the space age with Sputnik in 1957 and flew the first probes to the Moon and Venus. Luna 3 came from chief designer Sergei Korolev's OKB-1 bureau; later planetary probes such as Venera 9 were built by the Lavochkin bureau, which still builds Russian planetary spacecraft today.