Luna 3 was a Soviet space probe, launched on the second anniversary of Sputnik, that took the first photographs of the far side of the Moon, which is never visible from Earth. It flew around the Moon and photographed a large part of the hidden hemisphere. The pictures were developed on board on film, scanned and transmitted to Earth by radio, and their quality was poor, but they revealed that the far side has few of the dark plains called maria that dominate the near side. Soviet scientists named features such as Mare Moscoviense and the crater Tsiolkovskiy and published the first atlas of the far side. Luna 3 was also the first spacecraft to use a gravity assist, a swing-by of the Moon. Contact was lost in 1960.
Before and after
- 7 June 1959Birth of Mike Pence
- 17 July 1959Mary Leakey finds Zinjanthropus at Olduvai Gorge
- from 31 July 1959 to 20 October 2011Basque conflict
- 12 September 1959Launch of Luna 2
- 4 October 1959Launch of Luna 3
- 9 October 1959Birth of Boris Nemtsov
- 21 October 1959Construction of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
- 23 October 1959Birth of "Weird Al" Yankovic
- 26 October 1959Birth of Evo Morales
More in Universe & space
- 4 October 1957Launch of Sputnik 1
- 22 October 1969Discovery of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
- 14 September 1974Discovery of Leda
- 28 July 1989Discovery of Galatea
- 15 May 2005Discovery of Hydra
- 19 January 2006Launch of New Horizons
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.