In 1966, Soviet Luna 9 accomplished the first soft landing on the Moon.
Luna 9 was the first spacecraft to achieve a lunar soft landing and to transmit photographic data from the Moon’s surface to Earth, preceding the U.S. Surveyor 1 soft lander by about four months.
Learn more at http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1966-006A
