Luna

The Luna program was the Soviet Union’s long-running effort to explore the Moon with robotic spacecraft, and it claimed almost every early lunar first. In January 1959, Luna 1 became the first spacecraft to escape Earth’s gravity and fly past the Moon; it missed its target but went into orbit around the Sun. Eight months later, Luna 2 became the first human-made object to reach the Moon’s surface, and within weeks Luna 3 returned the first photographs of the far side, which no one had ever seen.

The program kept going through the 1960s and 1970s, alongside the Space Race. Luna 9 made the first soft landing on the Moon in 1966, and Luna 10 became the first spacecraft to orbit it. In 1970, Luna 16 became the first robotic mission to bring lunar soil back to Earth, and Luna 17 delivered Lunokhod 1, the first rover to drive on another world. The program ended in 1976 with Luna 24, the last lunar sample return for 44 years, until China’s Chang’e-5 in 2020.

Russia revived the name in 2023 with Luna 25, its first lunar attempt in nearly 50 years, but the lander crashed during the approach to landing.