1957–1969: Opening the Space Age
Luna 3
Returned the first images of the lunar far side.
Era 1 of 6 · full record in the catalog
- Launch
- 7 Oct 1959
- Lead / partner
- Soviet Union
- Target
- Moon
- Category
- Lunar flyby
- Status
- Success
- Vehicle
- Luna 8K72 s
- Mass
- 390 kg
- Orbit / trajectory
- unknown
- Duration
- 2 days, 14 hours, 22 minutes, 41 seconds
Why it happened
Luna 3 flew during 1957–1969: Opening the Space Age, as part of Soviet Union's work toward moon. A sourced write-up of the context around this mission is still on the editorial queue; nothing here is invented to fill the gap.
The mission
A month after Luna 2, Luna 3 swung around the Moon and photographed its far side for the first time, a hemisphere no one had ever seen, since the Moon is tidally locked to Earth. The grainy images, radioed back and later refined, let Soviet scientists start naming lunar features before anyone else got the chance.
Results
Returned the first images of the lunar far side.
Related missions
Sources & image credits
- Image credit: NASA · license: public-domain (source, checked 2026-08-23)
- Mission record: AntarikshPedia canonical dataset (data-sources/missions_timeline.md)
- Specifications reference: NASA NSSDCA Master Catalog