Exploration of the Moon and indeed of human history in general. The first man-made object to reach the Moon was the unmanned Soviet probe Luna 2, which made a hard landing on September 14, 1959, at 21:02:24 Z. The far side of the Moon was first photographed on October 7, 1959, by the Soviet probe Luna 3. Though vague by today's standards, the photos showed that the far side of the Moon almost completely lacked maria. In an effort to compete with these Soviet successes, U.S. President John F. Kennedy proposed the national goal of landing a human on the Moon. Speaking to a
Luna 2 a different vehicle, delaying the flight by three days. "Luna 2", like "Luna 1", took a direct path to the Moon, with a velocity high enough to result in a travel time of around 36 hours. "Luna 2" hit the Moon about from the centre of the visible disk on 1959 September 13 at 21:02:24 UTC. "Luna 2" was similar in design to "Luna 1", a spherical spacecraft with protruding antennas and instrumentation. The instrumentation was also similar to Luna 1, including scintillation counters, geiger counters, a magnetometer, Cherenkov detectors, and micrometeorite detectors. There were no propulsion systems on "Luna