Luna 13 launched 1966

Luna 13, a Soviet spacecraft, was launched to the moon December 21, 1966.  It became the third spacecraft to successfully land on the moon.  The first was Luna 9 in February 1966. The second was NASA's Surveyor 1 in May 1966.

It landed on December 24 in the Ocean of Storms (Oceanus Procellarum) between the Krafft and Seleucus craters.  Luna 13 took 5 panorama pictures, each taking 100 minutes to transmit.  

Contact was lost December 28 when the batteries were depleted.

Surveyor 1, first soft-landing on the moon, launched 1966

Surveyor 1, launched May 30, 1966, was the first successful lunar landing of NASA's Surveyor program.  (The Soviets had achieved a soft-landing with Luna 9 in February but that probe only transmitted three days.)  Surveyor 1 landed on June 3 and transmitted data until January 6, 1967 with interruptions during two-week lunar nights.

It carried only television cameras and no scientific instrumentation.  Surveyor 1 sent back over 10,000 pictures before its batteries ran down.

Luna 9 launched 1966

Close-up image of the moon's surface after landing.

Luna 9, launched January 31, 1966 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, was an unmanned Soviet lunar probe, which became the first spacecraft to accomplish a soft landing on another planetary body, besides Earth.  Earlier probes had contacted the lunar surface, but without much success.

Sergei Korolev (remember him?) oversaw the design and development of Luna 9, but died about 2 weeks prior to its launch.  It landed on February 3 in the Ocean of Storms, west of craters Reiner and Marius, and began transmitting data about 5 minutes after touchdown.

Soviet authorities did not release pictures from Luna 9, but scientists in England, also monitoring the craft, realized the signal format being used was identical ot the Radiofax system, used internationally by newspapers for transmitting pictures.  The images were decoded and published world-wide.

Contact was lost February 6.

Luna 9 makes a soft landing on the moon, 1966

A replica of Luna 9

The Soviet space program managed to make a soft landing on the moon, February 3, 1966 with Luna 9.  The previous successful venture by the Soviets was Luna 3 which circled the moon in 1956 and send back images of the 'dark' side.  After that, they had several failures in a row to make a soft landing on the moon.  Luna 4 and Luna 6 both missed the moon, and now Luna 6 is somewhere out there in the cosmos.  Lunas 5, 7 and 8 all crashed onto the moon's surface.  Finally, Luna 9 was successful, landing in Oceanus Procellarum.  It sent signals for 3 days before Earth lost contact with it.