on Zond 5. 1969: First docking between two crewed craft in Earth orbit and exchange of crews, Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5. 1970: First soil samples automatically extracted and returned to Earth from another celestial body, Luna 16. 1970: First robotic space rover, Lunokhod 1 on the Moon. 1970: First full interplanetary travel with a soft landing and useful data transmission. Data received from the surface of another planet of the Solar System (Venus), Venera 7 1971: First space station, Salyut 1. 1971: First probe to impact the surface of Mars, Mars 2. 1971: First probe to land on Mars, Mars 3. 1971: First armed space station, Almaz. 1975: First probe to orbit Venus, to make a soft landing on Venus, first photos from the surface of Venus, Venera 9. 1980: First Latin American, Cuban and person with African ancestry in space, Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez on Soyuz 38. 1984: First woman to walk in space, Svetlana Savitskaya (Salyut 7 space station). 1986: First crew to visit two separate space stations (Mir and Salyut 7). 1986: First probes to deploy robotic balloons into Venus atmosphere and to return pictures of a comet during close flyby Vega 1, Vega 2. 1986: First permanently crewed space station, Mir, 1986–2001, with a permanent presence on board (1989–1999). 1987: First crew to spend over one year in space, Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov on board of Soyuz TM-4 – Mir. 1988: First fully automated flight of a spaceplane (Buran). Incidents, failures, and setbacks Accidents and cover-ups The Soviet space program experienced a number of fatal incidents and failures. The first official cosmonaut fatality during training occurred on March 23, 1961, when Valentin Bondarenko died in a fire within a low pressure, high oxygen atmosphere. On April 23, 1967, Soyuz 1 crashed into the ground at due to a parachute failure, killing Vladimir Komarov. Komarov's death was the first in-flight fatality in the history of spaceflight. The Soviets continued striving for the first lunar mission with the huge N-1 rocket, which exploded on each of four uncrewed tests shortly after launch. The Americans won the race to land men on the Moon with Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969. In 1971, the Soyuz 11 mission to stay at the Salyut 1 space station resulted in the deaths of three cosmonauts when the reentry capsule depressurized during preparations for reentry. This accident resulted in the only human