Luna 2 also crash land on the Moon in exactly the same way. Crash landing proved useful even after soft landing was mastered. NASA used crash landings to test whether Moon craters contained ice by crashing space probes into craters and testing the debris that got thrown out. The satellite's impact made it the first man-made object to land on another celestial body. "Luna 2" carried 5 different instruments to conduct various tests while it was on its way to the Moon. The scintillation counters would be used to measure any ionizing radiation; the Cherenkov radiation detectors would be measuring for electromagnetic
Deliberate crash landings on extraterrestrial bodies purposes of this article. The crash landing sites themselves are of interest to space archeology. Luna 1, not itself a lunar orbiter, was the first spacecraft designed as an impactor. It failed to hit the Moon in 1959, however, thus inadvertently becoming the first man-made object to leave geocentric orbit and enter a heliocentric orbit, where it remains to this day. ! style="text-align:left" width=" |Mission ! style="text-align:left" width=" |Country/ Agency ! style="text-align:left" width=" |Date of landing/impact ! style="text-align:left" width=" |Notes Deliberate crash landings on extraterrestrial bodies These are tables of space probes (typically orbiters or components thereof) which have been