The first soft landing

Luna 9 came to rest in the Ocean of Storms and sent back the first photographs ever taken from the surface of another world.

It settled a real argument. A serious body of opinion held that the maria were covered in dust so deep that a lander would simply sink into it, and the pictures showed a firm surface with small stones on it. The signal was in radiofax format, and Jodrell Bank in Cheshire noticed, borrowed a machine from a newspaper office and published the images before the Soviets did.