The Soviet spacecraft that made the first soft landing on the Moon in 1966 was Luna 9.
Luna 9 touched down in Oceanus Procellarum on February 3, 1966, making it the first spacecraft to achieve a successful soft landing on the Moon. Earlier probes had either failed during descent or deliberately crashed. The achievement demonstrated that a lander could survive the final approach and operate on the lunar surface.
Luna 9 used a landing capsule protected by an inflatable airbag. After bouncing to a stop, the capsule opened its petals and deployed instruments, including a television system. It returned the first photographs taken from the surface of another world, showing nearby rocks and the lunar horizon. Its measurements also helped confirm that a spacecraft would not simply sink into a deep layer of lunar dust.
Luna 10, launched later in 1966, was the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon, not the first to land softly. Luna 2 had reached the Moon earlier, in 1959, but by impact. The Soviet Union’s later Luna 13 repeated Luna 9’s soft-landing success before the American Surveyor landers and Apollo missions.