Cold War (1953–1962) human on the moon. The first of the Lunar missions was Luna 1, which launched on January 2, 1959. Its successful mission established the first rocket engine restart within Earth orbit and the first man-made object to establish heliocentric orbit. Luna 2, which launched on September 14, 1959, established the first impact into another celestial body (the moon). Finally, Luna 3 launched on October 7, 1959 and took the first pictures of the dark side of the moon. After these three missions in 1953, the Soviets continued their exploration of the moon and its environment in 21 other Luna missions.
Luna 11 kilometers. During the mission, the TV camera failed to return usable images because the spacecraft lost proper orientation to face the lunar surface when a foreign object was lodged in the nozzle of one of the attitude-control thrusters. The other instruments functioned without fault before the mission formally ended on 1 October 1966 after the power supply had been depleted. Luna 11 Luna 11 (E-6LF series) was an unmanned space mission of the Soviet Union's Luna program. It was also called Lunik 11. "Luna 11" was launched towards the Moon from an earth-orbiting platform and entered lunar orbit on 27