January 2 1959 – The Soviet Union Launches Luna 1

January 2 1959 – The Soviet Union Launches Luna 13.7 (73.33%) 3 votes More than a decade before man would set foot on the Moon, the Soviet Union fired the first manmade object bound for it into space on January 2, 1959. Though the satellite would end up off course, Luna 1 advanced knowledge of the solar system on many fronts, particularly in its proof that radio communication could be carried through space well past 300,000 miles from Earth In the fifteen months after launching Sputnik 1 into low Earth orbit, the Space Race produced a remarkable number of events — six successful missions spread evenly between the United States […]