Luna 9

Luna 9 mockup, Air and Space Museum, Le Bourget, France Most of what you see is the braking stage that slowed the probe on the way down. The landing capsule rides on top inside the rounded airbag cover. On February 3, 1966, that capsule bounced down in the Ocean of Storms, opened four petals to steady itself and became the first spacecraft to land softly on the Moon. Within hours it sent back the first pictures taken on the surface of another world.