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 3 Luna 3 Luna 3, or E-2A No.1 was a Soviet spacecraft launched in 1959 as part of the Luna programme. It was the first-ever mission to photograph the far side of the Moon and the third Soviet space probe to be sent to the neighborhood of the Moon. Though it returned rather poor pictures by later standards, the historic, never-before-seen views of the far side of the Moon caused excitement and interest when they were published around the world, and a tentative "Atlas of the Far Side of the Moon" was created after image processing improved the pictures. These views