The Soviet Union’s Luna 5 uncrewed spacecraft crash-landed on the Moon.
Luna 5’s launch on May 9, 1965, went off about as smoothly as Soviet spacecraft launches could at the time, and there were high hopes for it to become the first spacecraft in history to make a soft landing on the Moon. Failures in its guidance system during flight and errors from the ground team during landing led to Luna 5 becoming the second Soviet spacecraft to impact the Moon’s surface.