“Red’s ‘Lunik’ Hits the Moon” was the title of a Universal-International News television report. To the background of fanfare, Ed Herlihy intoned “Soviet Russia scores a dramatic victory in the exploration of space, with the launch of the first rocket to the moon”. Bearing the Soviet coat of arms and hammer-and-sickle symbol, Herlihy continued, the “Lunik 2,” as he called it, became “the first man-made object to voyage from one cosmic body to another”. This was how many Americans learned of yet another early Soviet success in the Space Race.

On this day, September 14, in 1959, the Luna 2 soviet spacecraft, essentially a Sputnik clone with a slightly different propulsion system, impacted the moon around the Sea of Tranquility.

The moon was indeed a focal point of Russia after the launch of Sputnik, and Luna 2’s predecessor, Luna 1, was the the first man-made object to fly by the moon. The Luna 3 ventured further, to the dark side of the moon, beaming back the first images from there. Still, the ultimate prize of landing a man on the moon eluded the Soviets. The Luna program came to an end after the 24th in the series, in 1976.