First spacecraft to orbit the moon: Luna 10 (1966)

The Soviet Union's Luna 10 achieved two major milestones in 1966, becoming the first satellite to orbit anybody but Earth — and also becoming the first satellite to orbit the moon.

The spacecraft measured the moon's magnetic field, radiation environment, gravity field and other metrics. A gamma ray spectrometer gathered compositional information about the moon's surface, showing a lot of basalt.

Only two years later, in late 1968, the first satellite (spacecraft) with humans on board orbited the moon — NASA's Apollo 8. The first human moon landing, Apollo 11, followed on July 20, 1969.