O n May 18, 1991, cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev departed Earth for the Soviet space station Mir. While he was up there, the country that had sent him ceased to exist, making Krikalev – for a few months at ...

From 1961 to 1983, the U.S.’s old space race rival launched 16 probes, Venera 1 through Venera 16, that either flew by, orbited, or landed on Venus—with three of them failing en route.

In the late 1950s, Moscow’s streets were full of stray dogs that adapted to freezing nights and scarce food. One small ...

Sergey Korolev, who was an engineer and a victim of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, went on to help the Soviet Union beat the U.S. in the race to space during the Cold War. While Korolev may be not ...

A defunct spacecraft from the former Soviet Union that has been stuck in space for more than half a century is, at last, about to come home. Kosmos-482 was launched on a voyage to Venus in March ...