The Space Race is usually dated from 1957 to the mid‑1970s, with its peak between 1957 and 1969.

When was the Space Race?

Most historians bracket the Space Race as:

  • Start: 4 October 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite.
  • Climax: 20 July 1969, when the United States’ Apollo 11 mission landed humans on the Moon.
  • Symbolic end: 15–17 July 1975, with the joint Apollo‑Soyuz docking mission between the U.S. and USSR, seen as the moment competition gave way to cooperation.

So, if you’re answering “when was the space race?” in a quick way, a solid line is:

The Space Race ran roughly from 1957 (Sputnik) to 1975 (Apollo‑Soyuz), with the Moon landing in 1969 as its high point.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.