March 31: Luna 10 launches from the Soviet Union. The unmanned probe will achieve lunar orbit -- the first object to do so -- and send information about the moon back to earth. May 30: The ...

On this date, Jan. 2, 1959, the Soviet Union launched Luna 1. The probe would pass within 3,725.5 miles of the moon but did not hit the natural satellite due to a failure in the launch vehicle ...

A Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with the Luna-25 automatic station blasted off from the Vostochny spaceport in the Russian Far East at 2:10 a.m. Moscow time on August 11. The lunar probe carried out ...