The new planet was tiny, as planets go, but it was the first ever put into the solar system by man. The Soviet Union's moon-probe missilepromptly dubbed "Lunik" by the Russianswas a giant achievement in the young history of space exploration, the first time man had ever broken anything free from the tight gravitational hold of earth.
Lunik's great, multistage launching rocket, which probably weighed 250 tons or more, roared up from some part of the Soviet Union on Friday. When the Russians made their first announcement, they could already say with confidence that...
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