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
Moon escape Earth's gravity and pass near the Moon was "Luna 1"; the first human-made object to impact the lunar surface was "Luna 2", and the first photographs of the normally occluded far side of the Moon were made by "Luna 3", all in 1959. The first spacecraft to perform a successful lunar soft landing was "Luna 9" and the first unmanned vehicle to orbit the Moon was "Luna 10", both in 1966. Rock and soil samples were brought back to Earth by three "Luna" sample return missions ("Luna 16" in 1970, "Luna 20" in 1972, and "Luna 24" in 1976),