October 4, 2007 12:01 PM PDT
The first country to send a space probe to the moon plans to return in 2012 with its Luna-Glob spacecraft, which would land on the surface of the moon.
Pictured left is the first man-made object to hit the moon, Russia's Luna 2. On September 14, 1959, two days after its launch, Luna 2's instruments stopped abruptly, indicating that it had crashed into the moon as planned. The probe did confirm that the moon had no appreciable magnetic field and found no evidence of radiation belts.
Photo by NASA
