Task 1. Read the text. Put the sentences A-E into spaces 1-4.
A travel into space was
B landed human beings on the moon
C became the first pay-to-fly space
D a new sense of reality set
E being in space for a year
Driven to prove their superiority during the Cold War, as well as to gain a strategic advantage, the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union began the “Space Race” during the 1960s. In an astonishingly short time period, the U.S. Apollo program 1_______ and the Soviet Salyut program kept them in orbit for months at a time. Probes began to explore the solar system. Space seemed very close, at one point, tickets to the moon and to as-yet-nonexistent space stations were being sold.
After the Space Race ended, 2 _______ in. The wild dreams of the 1960s and 70s died, and humanity turned its attention earthward again. Space travel beyond Earth’s orbit became the exclusive domain of mankind’s robotic explorers, and high-profile tragedies both reaching and returning from orbit provided sobering reminders of the risks of space travel. By the end of the 20th century, 3_____ still exclusively the domain of governmental organizations.
However, necessity changed the situation with the dawn of the 21st century. Desperate for funds, the Russian Space Agency began to sell seats on Soyuz launches. Businessman Dennis Tito 4_____ tourist in April 2001, and since then a handful have followed in his footsteps, some of them even on more than one flight.