First impact into another world (the Moon)

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13 September 1959

Luna 2 (E-1A series) or Lunik 2 was the second of the Soviet Union's Luna programme spacecraft launched to the Moon. It was the first spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon, and the first man-made object to land on another celestial body. On September 13, 1959, it hit the Moon's surface east of Mare Imbrium near the craters Aristides, Archimedes, and Autolycus.
Launch was scheduled for September 9, but the Blok I core stage was shut down after it failed to reach full thrust at ignition. The booster was removed from the pad and replaced by a different vehicle, delaying the flight by three days. Luna 2, like Luna 1, took a direct path to the Moon, with a velocity high enough to result in a travel time of around 36 hours. Luna 2 hit the Moon about 800 kilometers (500 mi) from the centre of the visible disk on 1959 September 13 at 21:02:24 UTC.
Luna 2 site is near the right of the image, close to the Apollo 15 landing site
Luna 2 was similar in design to Luna 1, a spherical spacecraft with protruding antennas and instrumentation. The instrumentation was also similar to Luna 1, including scintillation counters, geiger counters, a magnetometer, Cherenkov detectors, and micrometeorite detectors. There were no propulsion systems on Luna 2 itself.
Once Luna 2 was split from its upper stage it started transmitting information back to Earth using three different transmitters. These transmitters provided precise information on its course, allowing scientists to calculate that Luna 2 would hit its mark on the Moon around 00:05 on September 14 (Moscow Time). In order to be able to provide a visual from Earth on September 13, the spacecraft released a vapor cloud that would expand to 650-kilometer (400 mi) diameter that would be seen by observatories in Alma Ata, Byurakan, Abastuma, Tbilisi, and Stalinabad. This vapor cloud also acted as an experiment to see how the sodium gas would act in a vacuum and zero gravity.
The last stage of the rocket that carried Luna 2 did not carry any type of tracking device so there was uncertainty as to where it landed, but it did hit the Moonsurface about 30 minutes after Luna 2 hit.

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