Luna 2

Luna 2 (), originally named the Second Soviet Cosmic Rocket and nicknamed Lunik 2 in contemporaneous media, was the sixth of the Soviet Union's Luna programme spacecraft launched to the Moon, E-1 No.7. It was the first spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon, and the first human-made object to make contact with another celestial body. The spacecraft was launched on 12 September 1959 by the Luna 8K72 s/n I1-7B rocket. It followed a direct path to the Moon. In addition to the radio transmitters sending telemetry information back to Earth, the spacecraft released a sodium gas cloud so the spacecraft's movement could be visually observed. On 13 September 1959, it impacted the Moon's surface east of Mare Imbrium near the craters Aristides, Archimedes, and Autolycus. Prior to impact, two sphere-shaped pennants with USSR and the launch date engraved in Cyrillic were detonated, sending pentagonal shields in all directions. Luna 2 did not detect radiation or magnetic belts around the Moon. Luna 1 and the three spacecraft of Luna programme before it were part of the Ye-1 series of spacecraft with a mass of . Luna missions that failed to successfully launch or achieve good results remained unnamed and were not publicly acknowledged. The first unnamed probe exploded on launch on 23 September 1958. Two more launches were unsuccessfully attempted on 11 October 1958 and 4 December 1958. Luna 1 was the fourth launch attempt and the first partial success of the program. It launched on 2 January 1959 and missed the Moon by . One mission separated Luna 1 and Luna 2, a launch failure that occurred with an unnamed probe on 18 June 1959. Luna 2 would be the Soviet Union's sixth attempt to impact the Moon. It was the second of the Ye-1a series, modified to carry a heavier payload of and had a combined mass of . Luna 2 was similar in design to Luna 1, a spherical space probe with protruding antennas and instrumentation.