Cold War (1953–1962) human on the moon. The first of the Lunar missions was Luna 1, which launched on January 2, 1959. Its successful mission established the first rocket engine restart within Earth orbit and the first man-made object to establish heliocentric orbit. Luna 2, which launched on September 14, 1959, established the first impact into another celestial body (the moon). Finally, Luna 3 launched on October 7, 1959 and took the first pictures of the dark side of the moon. After these three missions in 1953, the Soviets continued their exploration of the moon and its environment in 21 other Luna missions.
Luna 2 devices were searching for lunar magnetic and radiation fields similar to the Van Allen radiation belt around Earth, sending information about once every minute until its last transmission which came about 55 km away from the lunar surface. Although it did prove previous measurements of the Van Allen radiation belts that were taken from Luna 1 around the Earth, it was not able to detect any type of radiation belts around the Moon. Because of claims that information received from Luna 1 was fake, as soon as the scientists of "Luna 2" started receiving transmissions they sent out the intended