Luna 2 was the second craft in the Luna program of the Soviet Union. (The Luna program, which means “moon” in Russian, was a series of orbiter or lander robotic spacecraft sent to the Moon between 1959 and 1976.) The 860.2-pound (390.2-kilogram) spacecraft impacted the Moon’s surface in the Palus Putredinis region, just west of Mare Serenitatis near the craters named Aristides, Archimedes, and Autolycus and the hills of Montes Archimedes.

It was shaped like a sphere, but with several antennas and other instruments, such as Geiger counters, a magnetometer, Cherenkov detectors, micrometerite detectors, and scintillation counters, positioned on its body.

Luna 2 (designated E-1A No. 7) was important to space exploration because it made the first observation and study of the Sun’s solar wind with the use of ion trap sensors, which “trapped” ions coming from plasma ejected from the Sun. It also confirmed earlier observations that the Moon did not have a magnetic field of any appreciable amount (it’s actually one hundred times smaller than Earth’s field), and did not have any recognizable sign of having radiation belts.

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