Luna 1 but it was a second or two before we realised what we had". The picture shows the lights of Edinburgh in the foreground. The rocket is seen as an illuminated cloud top centre." "Luna 1" was meant to crash on the Moon; however, due to a malfunction of the ground control system, the probe missed its target by 5,995 kilometers. Despite this, "Luna 1" still managed to collect vital information to assist in the understanding of the universe. Its goal to crash on the Moon was subsequently achieved by Luna 2 on September 13, 1959. Luna 1 Luna 1, also
Luna 2 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 from the centre of the visible disk on 1959 September 13 at 21:02:24 UTC. "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