Luna Programme Lunar Landers

The Luna programme was a series of robotic missions launched by the Soviet Union between 1959 and 1976 to explore the Moon, among them a line of soft landing spacecraft that reached the lunar surface intact after the earlier flyby and impact missions. These Luna landers achieved the first soft landing on another world, returned the first photographs taken from the lunar surface, deployed the first robotic rovers to operate beyond Earth, and carried out three successful uncrewed sample return missions that brought lunar soil back to Earth years before any other nation repeated the feat. The landers used a combination of retrorockets and crushable landing legs or airbag cushioned capsules depending on the mission generation and payload carried.