Luna 3: Rightful King of 1950s Space Missions

Eric Berger, Ars Technica
To the extent that most people think about spaceflight before NASA's Apollo program, they probably remember the flights of Yuri Gagarin or Alan Shepard, or perhaps the launch of Sputnik on this date in 1957. But between Sputnik and the first human launches, the Soviet Union flew a lunar exploration program that was remarkable for its time.