This is where it all began 65 years ago, and this Postcard from Moon looks at the region where Earth’s first messenger arrived at the Moon.
Luna 2, launched in September of 1959, had impacted on the Moon! The planned crash of the 300-kilogram emissary from Earth proclaimed the Earthmen were coming! What no would have believed at the time is that it would take less than 10 years from the impact of Luna 2 on northeastern Mare Imbrium to Neil Armstrong’s small step for mankind on the plains of Mare Tranquillitatis.
In 1959, Apollo would seem like a science fiction dream. The reality of the fledgling attempts to reach the Moon in the first years of the space age were marked by spectacular rocket explosions or failures. But here on the Moon’s northwest quadrant stood the shattered remains of Luna 2 marking the stunning achievement of reaching the Moon less than two years after the first artificial satellite brightened the dark night sky.
Deep space spacecraft tracking was a crude in the late 1950’s and the precise impact point of Luna 2 eludes us, but it is believed to be just north of Palus Putredinis, the tongue of smooth basalt extending southeast from 88-kilometer Archimedes crater at the image left. To commemorate the arrival of the first spacecraft to reach the Moon, the region north of Putredinis and roughly bordered by Archimedes, 55-kilometer Aristillus at the upper right, and 40-kilometer Autolycus at center right, is now known as Sinus Lunicus, the Bay of Lunik. The name is derived from the popular name applied to the spacecraft by the news media of the day, a combination of Luna and Sputnik.
