Luna 8 velocity sufficiently for a survivable landing, "Luna 8" plummeted to the lunar surface and crashed at 21:51:30 UT on 6 December in the west of Oceanus Procellarum. The coordinates of the crash site are . Luna 8 Luna 8 (E-6 series), also known as Lunik 8, was a lunar space probe of the Luna program. It was launched in on December 3, 1965 with the objective of achieving a soft landing on the Moon. However, its retrorocket firing occurred too late, and suffered a hard impact on the lunar surface on the Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms). The mission did
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