Moon landing the only country to have successfully conducted manned missions to the Moon, with the last departing the lunar surface in December 1972. After the unsuccessful attempt by the Luna 1 to land on the Moon in 1959, the Soviet Union performed the first hard (unpowered) Moon landing later that same year with the Luna 2 spacecraft, a feat the U.S. duplicated in 1962 with Ranger 4. Since then, twelve Soviet and U.S. spacecraft have used braking rockets to make soft landings and perform scientific operations on the lunar surface, between 1966 and 1976. In 1966 the USSR accomplished the first
Moon Duchin Moon Duchin Moon Duchin is an American mathematician who works as an associate professor at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. Her mathematical research concerns geometric topology, geometric group theory, and Teichmüller theory. She is also interested in the history of science, and is one of the core faculty members of the Science, Technology, and Society program at Tufts. She has done significant research on the mathematics of redistricting and gerrymandering, and founded a research group to advance these mathematical studies and their nonpartisan application in the real world of US politics. Duchin was given her first name, Moon, by parents