"Missed it by that much!"

And like the bumbling agent of the very funny 1960s TV series, Luna 1
went on to fame and history, thanks in part to Soviet propoganda and
the West's credulous fear of their space accomplishments, despite not
hitting the Moon as planned.

That mission is for the next 50th space anniversary in September,
courtesy of Luna 2. Then will come the first imaging of the lunar
farside the following month with Luna 3.

Keep in mind that before and after those heavily publicized successes,
the Soviets had far more failures in their early lunar program than most
people knew at the time. The US had to be the ones who got every
space launch revealed with a media spotlight, so by comparison our
early failures (we didn't have a truly successful lunar probe until Ranger 7
in 1964) made us look like we weren't going to put the first men on the
Moon.