Flashback Friday - 1959 First Man Made Spacecraft To Land On Moon

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Space the final frontier... So we have all heard of the space race back in the mid 1900's.  The USA and Russia were in a race to get to space and specifically the moon.  The USSR was actually able to get the first unmanned spacecraft the Luna 2 to land (hit) the moon surface. On September 13, 1959, it hit/crashed on the Moon's surface east of Mare Imbrium near the craters Aristides, Archimedes, and Autolycus.

Source: Wikipedia


The Luna 2 (Lunik 2)
This little dude was a spherical spacecraft with protruding antennas and instrumentation. They included:

  1. Scintillation counters to measure any ionizing radiation
  2. Cherenkov radiation detectors to measure electromagnetic radiation
  3. The Geiger Counter had the primary scientific objective of determining the electron spectrum of the outer radiation belt.
  4. Fluxgate magnetometer to measure magnetism.
  5. Micrometeorite detectors well to detect micrometeorites of course...
"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 center of the visible disk on 1959 September 13 at 21:02:24 UTC." (Wikipedia)

Although the USSR was able to get the first man made object to land on the moon, the US was still able to get the first man on the moon on July 20th 1969 with Neil Armstrong's famous "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." 

On thing is certain man's desire to explore space will continue to drive innovation and technological progress!  So when will man land on Mars????


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