The Space Race changes direction

Once he had arrived in the White House, America’s new President John F. Kennedy had to address the problem of restoring lost pride and prestige back to the nation, after the double setback and humiliation of being beaten to put the first man into space by Yuri Gagarin’s mission on April 12, 1961, and then, five days later, the failed Bay of Pigs military invasion of Cuba, the CIA’s biggest ever fiasco.