Before astronauts ever set foot on the moon, robots like NASA's Surveyor 3 (shown above with Apollo 12 commander Pete Conrad) paved the way ahead. The former Soviet Union was first when its Luna 2 probe impacted the moon, but NASA's Surveyor 1 made the first-ever controlled soft landing on June 2, 1966 and others followed to show a world a stark, but solid, landscape. Here, Conrad poses with his lunar lander Intrepid in the background, and later he took components of Surveyor 3 back to Earth for study. Apollo 12 lunar module pilot Alan Bean took this photo.