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 devices were searching for lunar magnetic and radiation fields similar to the Van Allen radiation belt around Earth, sending information about once every minute until its last transmission which came about 55 km away from the lunar surface. Although it did prove previous measurements of the Van Allen radiation belts that were taken from Luna 1 around the Earth, it was not able to detect any type of radiation belts around the Moon. Because of claims that information received from Luna 1 was fake, as soon as the scientists of "Luna 2" started receiving transmissions they sent out the intended