he Moon was first reached by a human-
made object in September 1959, when the
Soviet Union’s Luna 2, an uncrewed
spacecraft, was intentionally crashed
onto the lunar surface. This
accomplishment was followed by the first
successful soft landing on the Moon by
Luna 9 in 1966. The United States’ NASA
Apollo program achieved the only human
lunar missions to date, beginning with the
first human orbital mission by Apollo 8 in
1968, and six human landings between
1969 and 1972, with the first being Apollo