My history in this topic is not quite in check. i know that in the 1950 the Soviet Union (Russia) and United States were having quite the "battle" to see who can get to the moon first. Russia did land a ship on the moon, but US was the first nation to put a person on the moon.
Hope this helped.
-Chris
*don't base your information on me, this is just my knowledge and i may be wrong.!
The Soviet Union.
Project Mercury was the first manned US space program, consisting of six flights between 1961 and 1963. Of these, two were sub-orbital flights while the last four all completed at least one orbit of the Earth.
Mercury was the name given to the first American space program.
The Nation Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Russians
The first space program dedicated to putting a man on the moon was Apollo. It was run by NASA and had a series of missions starting in the 1960s with the eventual success of landing astronauts on the moon in 1969 with Apollo 11.
mother russia
They fly the rockets out of Orlando (Its the Kennedy Space Center)
The Mercury Program was the first manned space flight program,
The Russian space program in the 1960s was known as the Soviet space program. It was responsible for significant achievements such as launching the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, and sending the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space.
The Mercury program
Mercury was the name of the first American Space program started by NASA. The goals were to see if humans can go to space and function normaly.