Luna programme became the first probe to achieve a soft landing on another planetary body. It returned five black and white stereoscopic circular panoramas, which were the first close-up shots of the Lunar surface. "Luna 10" (March 1966) became the first artificial satellite of the Moon. "Luna 17" (November 1970) and "Luna 21" (January 1973) carried the Lunokhod vehicles, which roamed around on the Moon's terrain. Another major achievement of the Luna programme, with "Luna 16" (September 1970), "Luna 20" (February 1972) and "Luna 24" (August 1976), was the ability to collect samples of lunar soil and return them to Earth. The
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