Far side of the Moon side visible to Earth. On October 7, 1959, the Soviet probe Luna 3 took the first photographs of the lunar far side, eighteen of them resolvable, covering one-third of the surface invisible from the Earth. The images were analysed, and the first atlas of the far side of the Moon was published by the USSR Academy of Sciences on November 6, 1960. It included a catalog of 500 distinguished features of the landscape. A year later, the first globe (1:13 600 000 scale ) containing lunar features invisible from the Earth was released in the USSR, based on images from
Moon landing are generally lighter in weight than a rocket with equivalent capability. The Soviets succeeded in making the first crash landing on the Moon in 1959. Crash landings may occur because of malfunctions in a spacecraft, or they can be deliberately arranged for vehicles which do not have an onboard landing rocket. There have been many such Moon crashes, often with their flight path controlled to impact at precise locations on the lunar surface. For example, during the Apollo program the S-IVB third stage of the Saturn V moon rocket as well as the spent ascent stage of the Lunar Module