Manned Interplanetary Mission

Overview
This TL is similar to that of The Marsniks are successful. But what if the U.S. went further and bolder?

Timeline
October 4, 1957: USSR launched Sputnik 1 into space, which is the first artificial satellite.

1959: USSR's Luna 1 flew by the Moon and went into interplanetary space, becoming the first spacecraft to do so.

October 1960: The twin missions Marsnik 1 and 2 is launched to the namesake target which is a success in this TL. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev displayed the models of the spacecrafts at the UN building afterwards, and eventually the twin probes will reach the target and send back first images of Mars. Point of divergence.

January 1961: The U.S. launched the first hominid "Ham" into space.

March 24, 1961: NASA astronaut is the first man in space, with a suborbital flight of the Freedom 7 space capsule.

April 12, 1961: USSR's Yuri Gagarin became the first man to go into orbit.

April 17, 1961: The Bays of Pigs invasion against Cuba by the United States commences, though it will ultimately fail.

May 25, 1961: As in OTL, U.S. President Kennedy delivers the moonshot speech in the Congress. In response the USSR ordered the preparation for their own moonshot as well.

July 21, 1961: NASA astronaut Gus Grissom is the second American in space, although his space capsule sunk into ocean after splashdown as in OTL.

August 1961: The Berlin Wall construction is started.

February 20, 1962: John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.

July 22, 1962: U.S. spacecraft Mariner 1 is launched as the first American mission to flyby a planet. It will return first images of the planet Venus.

August 27, 1962: Mariner 2 is launched as a successor of the Mariner 1 mission.

November 22, 1963: Assassination of President Kennedy.

1965: Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov made the first spacewalk.

1966: USSR cosmonaut Irina Solovyova became the first woman to conduct a spacewalk in the Voskhod 5 mission.

1967: In this TL the Soyuz 1 tragedy didn't happen at all. Apollo 1 ends up in a disaster.

1968: NASA's Apollo 8 flew around the Moon.

July 4, 1969: The test firing of Soviet N1 rocket is successful.

July 20, 1969: NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong is the first human to land on the Moon.

1970: A Soyuz 7K-LOK spaceship carrying Alexei Leonov and Vladimir Komarov flew around the Moon. This alone caused a major shock to Americans regardless of Apollo 11. Meanwhile NASA began the preparations to conduct a manned flyby of the planet Venus, while the Apollo 13 in this TL is successful.

1971: Soviet Union's launched the Salyut 1 space station. On October, Alexei Leonov became the first Soviet citizen to step foot on the Moon after landing with an LK (Lunniy Korabl) spacecraft. Later on they launched the second manned moon landing mission to the Luna 9 landing site.

1972: USSR shocked the world again by putting the first woman on the Moon when Irina Solovyova became the sole landing crew of their third manned lunar landing mission. Afterwards they shocked the world again when they land a person on the lunar south pole.

Early 1973: USSR did another monumental feat by placing a L3M habitat on the lunar surface, near where Alexei Leonov has landed 6 years ago, thereby becoming the first manned surface colony beyond Earth. Cosmonaut Boris Volynov occupied the lunar habitat and is greeted as a hero when he returned afterwards.

October 31, 1973: The U.S. launched the Manned Venus Flyby mission, with astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Pete Conrad and Jim Lovell in it.

March 3, 1974: The American manned interplanetary spacecraft flew by Venus. Buzz Aldrin took a picture of the planet which will become an iconic sensation, even more than the Apollo 8 Earthrise picture.

December 1, 1974: The trio who flew by Venus returned to Earth. They were greeted with a hero's welcome.

1975: An Apollo spacecraft docked with a Soyuz spacecraft, marking the end of the Space Race.

1976: NASA launched a space station based on the Self-Deploying Space Station design, becoming the first space station with artificial gravity.