<P> On October 21, 1959, Eisenhower approved the transfer of the Army's remaining space - related activities to NASA . On July 1, 1960, the Redstone Arsenal became NASA's George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, with von Braun as its first director . Development of the Saturn rocket family, which when mature, gave the US parity with the Soviets in terms of lifting capability, was thus transferred to NASA . </P> <P> In 1958, Korolev upgraded the R - 7 to be able to launch a 400 - kilogram (880 lb) payload to the Moon . Three secret 1958 attempts to launch Luna E-1 - class impactor probes failed . The fourth attempt, Luna 1, launched successfully on January 2, 1959, but missed the Moon . The fifth attempt on June 18 also failed at launch . The 390 - kilogram (860 lb) Luna 2 successfully impacted the Moon on September 14, 1959 . The 278.5 - kilogram (614 lb) Luna 3 successfully flew by the Moon and sent back pictures of its far side on October 6, 1959 . </P> <P> The US reacted to the Luna program by embarking on the Ranger program in 1959, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory . The Block I Ranger 1 and Ranger 2 suffered Atlas - Agena launch failures in August and November 1961 . The 727 - pound (330 kg) Block II Ranger 3 launched successfully on January 26, 1962, but missed the Moon . The 730 - pound (330 kg) Ranger 4 became the first US spacecraft to reach the Moon, but its solar panels and navigational system failed near the Moon and it impacted the far side without returning any scientific data . Ranger 5 ran out of power and missed the Moon by 725 kilometers (391 nmi) on October 21, 1962 . The first successful Ranger mission was the 806 - pound (366 kg) Block III Ranger 7 which impacted on July 31, 1964 . </P> <P> By 1959, American observers believed that the Soviet Union would be the first to get a human into space, because of the time needed to prepare for Mercury's first launch . On April 12, 1961, the USSR surprised the world again by launching Yuri Gagarin into a single orbit around the Earth in a craft they called Vostok 1 . They dubbed Gagarin the first cosmonaut, roughly translated from Russian and Greek as "sailor of the universe". Although he had the ability to take over manual control of his capsule in an emergency by opening an envelope he had in the cabin that contained a code that could be typed into the computer, it was flown in an automatic mode as a precaution; medical science at that time did not know what would happen to a human in the weightlessness of space . Vostok 1 orbited the Earth for 108 minutes and made its reentry over the Soviet Union, with Gagarin ejecting from the spacecraft at 7,000 meters (23,000 ft), and landing by parachute . The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (International Federation of Aeronautics) credited Gagarin with the world's first human space flight, although their qualifying rules for aeronautical records at the time required pilots to take off and land with their craft . For this reason, the Soviet Union omitted from their FAI submission the fact that Gagarin did not land with his capsule . When the FAI filing for Gherman Titov's second Vostok flight in August 1961 disclosed the ejection landing technique, the FAI committee decided to investigate, and concluded that the technological accomplishment of human spaceflight lay in the safe launch, orbiting, and return, rather than the manner of landing, and revised their rules, keeping Gagarin's and Titov's records intact . </P>

When did the first us satellite reach the moon
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