Luna 2 carried two spherical "pennants," which it deposited on the Moon's surface when it crashed. When he visited the U.S. after the Luna 2 impact, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev presented President Dwight Eisenhower with a replica of the pennant. Credit: Patrick Pelletier/CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Key Takeaways:
- Luna 2, launched by the Soviet Union in September 1959, achieved the first human-made object impact on a celestial body other than Earth (the Moon).
- The mission's journey to the Moon lasted approximately 30 hours, culminating in a high-velocity impact of roughly 3 kilometers per second.
- Pre-impact data collected by Luna 2's instruments contributed to the scientific understanding of the Moon, confirming the absence of a substantial magnetic field and radiation belts analogous to Earth's.
- The successful Luna 2 mission held significant political implications, furthering the Soviet Union's lead in the Space Race.
Less than two years after the successful launch of Sputnik 1, the Soviet Union put a spacecraft on the Moon. Launched Sept. 12, 1959, Luna 2 traveled over 30 hours to crash-land on the lunar surface. The impact happened at a speed of about 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) per second, and represented the first contact between a human-made craft and a solar system body other than Earth. Though the impact destroyed the spacecraft, its suite of instruments returned data before the crash, and helped confirm that the Moon lacks both significant magnetic field and radiation belts like Earth’s Van Allen belts. And, of course, the political weight of Luna 2 represented another Soviet win in the Space Race.
