TheLuna missionsbegan in 1958, before the Apollo program was even conceived.
Its mission was to send a series of robotic spacecraft to the mooneither an orbiter or a lander.
The ultimate goal was to bring lunar sample back to earth.
The Luna programme suffered several failures early in the mission.
Many of their launches never even reached earth orbit.
Others reached orbit, but then refused to leave.
A couple of them managed to get all the way to the moon only to fly past it.
A handful of them crash landed on the lunar surface.
There is no reason to make fun of the Soviets.
You have to remember that no spacecraft had ever left earth orbit at that time.
The spacecraft entered lunar orbit on July 17, 1969, three days ahead of the Americans.
But the Soviets had not anticipated the ruggedness of the lunar surface.
But again the uncertainty of the terrain below delayed the landing.
During this critical period, Apollo 11 astronauts walked on the moon and collected 21.5 kg of lunar rock.
By then Luna 15 had circled the moon fifty-two times.
Four minutes into the descent, Luna 15 crashed into the side of a mountain.
NASA was told Luna 15 was an orbiter.
The Luna 16 mission later succeeded where Luna 15 had failed.
It became the first robotic probe to land on the moon and return a sample to earth.
Subsequent Luna missions brought more lunar samples and also put two lunar roversanother firston the moon.
