What country was first to launch a spacecraft that landed on the moon?

Question

I also would like to know what year it was launched and what the name of the spacecraft is

Answer 1

The USSR was first in all these:

In 1959, the Luna 2 mission successfully IMPACTED upon the lunar surface, becoming the first man-made object to reach the Moon.

Luna 3 rounded the Moon later that year, and returned the first photographs of its far side, which can never be seen from Earth.

But you asked about a spacecraft that landed on the moon, Luna 9 became the first probe to achieve a soft LANDING on the Moon (February 1966). It returned five black and white stereoscopic circular panoramas, which were the first close-up shots of the Lunar surface.

Answer 2

The first spacecraft soft landed on the moon was the unmanned probe Lunik (Luna 9) by Russia in 1966. Before that, America and Russia crashed several probes onto the moon.

Answer 3

The exploration of the Moon by physical means began when Luna 2, a space probe launched by the Soviet Union, impacted the surface of the Moon on September 14, 1959.

HLCYG

Answer 4

Unmanned: USSR; Luna 2, on 14 September 1959
Manned: United States; Apollo 11, on 20 July 1969

To quote Neil Armstrong, "Houston, this is Tranquility Base the Eagle has landed."

The lunar module landed in the Sea of Tranquillity and the crew decided to name the lunar module "Eagle"

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
"The Apollo 11 mission was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. It was the fifth human spaceflight of the Apollo program and the third human voyage to the moon. Launched on July 16, 1969, it carried Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Collins orbited above.

The mission fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's goal of reaching the moon by the end of the 1960s. In a 1961 speech he had proposed - "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the earth"."

Lunar 2 from the USSR may have been the first probe to land on the moon, but how do you define spacecraft? Luna 1 did a fly by, it may have been intended to land, but the Russians never said so.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_3
"Luna 2 (E-3 series) was the third spacecraft sent successfully to the moon and was an early triumph in the human exploration of outer space. Though it returned rather poor pictures by later standards, the historic, never-before-seen views of the Moon's far side 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."

According to Wikipedia:
Luna 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_1
Luna 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_2
"Luna 2 (E-1A series) was the second of the Soviet Union's Luna program spacecraft launched in the direction of the Moon. It was the first spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon, and it impacted the lunar surface west of Mare Serenitatis near the Aristides, Archimedes, and Autolycus craters."

Answer 5

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