Luna E-6 No.2 Luna E-6 No.2 Luna E-6 No.2, also identified as No.1, and sometimes known in the West as Sputnik 25, was a Soviet spacecraft which launched in 1963, but was placed into a useless orbit due to a problem with the upper stage of the rocket that launched it. It was a Luna E-6 spacecraft, the first of twelve to be launched, It was intended to be the first spacecraft to perform a soft landing on the Moon, a goal which would eventually be accomplished by the final E-6 spacecraft, Luna 9. Luna E-6 No.2 was launched at 08:49 UTC on
Luna 2 onto the Moon. At that time the closest Americans had come to the Moon was about with Pioneer 4. Khrushchev, on his only visit to the U.S., gave president Eisenhower a replica of the Soviet pennants that "Luna 2" had just placed onto the lunar surface. "Luna 2" and its predecessors all came to be used throughout the USSR and around the world as pro-communist propaganda. Donald W. Cox explains, in his book "The Space Race", “Although the Sputniks and Luniks did not themselves provide better cars, refrigerators, color TV sets, and homes for the peasants and laborers of the