Space Race
Starting in 1959 , and over the course of seventeen years , the Soviet Space Program Luna sent robotic missions to the moon . Luna 1 missed the mark and ended up orbiting the sun , but Luna 2 ( in September 1959 ) was the first human-constructed object to crash on the moon . Early in 1966 , Luna 9 became the first probe to touch down softly . This was important for showing that a lander wouldn ’ t sink into the lunar dust . It turns out that NASA , too , had been crashing probes into the moon before Luna 9 landed . In the 1960s , NASA ’ s Ranger Program was sending up spacecraft with the specific intention of hurtling them at the moon and taking photos throughout the process . Costing about $ 1.3 billion dollars ( adjusted for today ), the first 6 Ranger probes all failed in one way or another . Rangers 7 , 8 , and 9 , however , all hit their marks and returned their catastrophic images .
Phase 5 : Full Moon
Which brings us to the full moon , the brightest moment that allows the moon to shine with reflected light and reveal , from its perspective , what it has gained from our travels there . And unfortunately , the only thing that the moon has gained from all of this probing is a black eye . Méliès was prescient .
Not only have we bombarded the lunar surface without mercy , but in our many visits there , we have taken a great deal : samples , dust , rocks , and data . Yet all that we have left behind in its place has been a heaping mound of trash . More than 413,000 pounds of trash . Some things we abandoned when we pulled up stakes and left after the various Apollo missions from 11 to 17 , and some is made up of things that we purposefully crashed . Probes , rocket parts , descent stages of landers , satellites , and three moon buggies�these are the items most people might think of if asked to name garbage on the moon . But it is the small stuff that is much more tell-
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