Beyond_Earth-_A_Chronicle_of_Deep_Space_Exploration_1958-2016.pdf

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Kosmos 96 [Venera]

Nation: USSR (38)

Objective(s): Venus flyby

Spacecraft: 3MV-4 (no. 6)

Spacecraft Mass: c. 950 kg

Mission Design and Management: OKB-1

Launch Vehicle: Molniya + Blok L (8K78 no. U103-30, also U15000-30)

Launch Date and Time: 23 November 1965 / 03:14 UT

Launch Site: NIIP-5 / Site 31/6

Scientific Instruments:

1. three-component magnetometer
2. imaging system
3. solar x-radiation detector
4. cosmic ray gas-discharge counters
5. piezoelectric detectors
6. ion traps
7. photon Geiger counter
8. cosmic radio emission receivers

A model of the Ye-6-type lunar probe on display at the Memorial Museum of Cosmonauts in Moscow. The package on 'right' is the lunar lander (the ALS). The three silver balls visible in the foreground are three of the four gas storage bottles for the attitude control system. The two (of four total) black-and-white nozzles facing left are verniers. The main S5.5A engine is at the left or aft end of the entire spacecraft. Credit: Asif Siddiqi

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Results: This was the third and last spacecraft prepared for a Venus encounter by the Soviets in 1965. All three spacecraft had originally been intended for Mars exploration in 1964–1965. In this case, during coast to Earth orbit, a combustion chamber in the booster's third stage engine exploded due to a crack in the fuel pipeline. Although the payload reached Earth orbit, the Blok L upper stage was tumbling and was unable to fire for trans-Venus trajectory injection. The probe remained stranded in Earth orbit and the Soviets named it Kosmos 96 to disguise its true mission. The probe decayed on 9 December 1965.

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Luna 8

Nation: USSR (39)

Objective(s): lunar soft-landing

Spacecraft: Ye-6 (no. 12)

Spacecraft Mass: 1,552 kg

Mission Design and Management: OKB-1

Launch Vehicle: Molniya-M + Blok L (8K78M no. U103-28, also U15000-48)

Launch Date and Time: 3 December 1965 / 10:46:14 UT

Launch Site: NIIP-5 / Site 31/6

Scientific Instruments:

• 1. imaging system
• 2. SBM-10 radiation detector

Results: This, the tenth Soviet attempt to achieve a lunar soft-landing, nearly succeeded. The Blok L upper stage successfully dispatched the probe towards the Moon. After a successful mid-course correction at 19:00 UT on 4 December, the spacecraft headed towards its targeted landing site on the Moon without any apparent problems. Just prior to the planned retro-fire burn, a command was sent to inflate cushioning airbags around the ALS lander probe. Unfortunately, a plastic mounting bracket appears to have pierced one of the two bags. The resulting expulsion of air put the spacecraft into a spin (of 12°/second). The vehicle momentarily regained attitude, long enough for a 9-second retro-engine firing, but then lost it again. Without a full retro-burn to reduce approach velocity sufficient for a survivable landing, Luna 8 plummeted to the lunar surface and crashed at 21:51:30 UT on 6 December just west of the Kepler crater. Impact coordinates were 9° 8′ N / 63° 18′ W. The Soviet news agency TASS merely reported that "the station's systems functioned normally at all stages of the landing except the final one."

64

Pioneer VI

Nation: USA (25)

Objective(s): heliocentric orbit

Spacecraft: Pioneer A

Spacecraft Mass: 62.14 kg

Mission Design and Management: NASA / ARC

Launch Vehicle: Thrust Augmented Delta (Thor Delta E no. 35 / Thor no. 460/DSV-3E)

Launch Date and Time: 16 December 1965 / 07:31:21 UT

Launch Site: Cape Kennedy / Launch Complex 17A

Scientific Instruments:

• 1. single-axis fluxgate magnetometer
• 2. plasma Faraday cup
• 3. electrostatic analyzer
• 4. cosmic ray telescope
• 5. cosmic ray anisotropy detector
• 6. two-frequency beacon receiver

Pioneer VI was the first in a series of solar-orbiting spacecraft designed to obtain measurements on a continuing basis of interplanetary phenomena from widely separated points in space. Credit: NASA

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Results: Pioneer VI was the first of several NASA spacecraft designed for launch at six-month intervals to study interplanetary phenomena in space in heliocentric orbits similar to that of Earth. These spacecraft successfully provided simultaneous scientific measurements at widely dispersed locations in heliocentric orbit. The so-called Improved Thrust Augmented Delta launch vehicle's third stage burned for 23 seconds to boost Pioneer VI into heliocentric orbit. Initial solar orbit for the spacecraft ranged from 0.814 AU (perihelion) to 0.985 AU (aphelion) with a period of 311.3 days. By 2 March 1966, Pioneer VI had transmitted about 250 million readings from its six scientific instruments. In the fall of 1969, JPL and UCLA scientists reported the results of a solar occultation performed from 21–24 November 1968. This was the first time that a spacecraft had been tracked while passing behind the Sun, allowing scientists, despite an unfavorable signal-to-noise ratio of data transmission, to examine the solar corona during this passage. Scientists used instruments on Pioneer VI in coordination with those on Pioneer VII, in November and December 1969, to measure solar wind particles and carry out long-distance communications experiments. Five years after launch, at the end of 1970, Pioneer VI had orbited the Sun six times, and had passed by the Sun's far side (relative to Earth), sending back new information on the solar atmosphere and regular solar weather reports. One of the two radio receivers was still operational, and although some of the solar cells had been damaged by solar flares, the spacecraft was still getting sufficient power to operate satisfactorily. Pioneer VI returned the first data on the tenuous solar atmosphere and later recorded the passage of Comet Kohoutek's tail in 1974 (in conjunction with Pioneer VIII) from a range of about 100 million kilometers from the comet's nucleus. Along with Pioneers VII, VIII, and IX, the spacecraft formed a ring of solar weather stations spaced along Earth's orbit. Measurements by the four Pioneers were used to predict solar storms for approximately 1,000 primary users including the Federal Aviation Agency, commercial airlines, power companies, communication companies, military organizations, and entities involved in surveying, navigation, and electronic prospecting. By December 1990, Pioneer VI had circled the Sun 29 times (travelling 24.8 billion kilometers) and had been operational for twenty straight years—a record for a deep space probe. Its original slated lifetime had been only six months, achieved on 16 June 1966. Of the spacecraft's six scientific instruments, two (the plasma Faraday cup and the cosmic ray detector) functioned well into the 1990s. NASA maintained contact with the spacecraft once or twice each year during the 1990s. For example, one hour's worth of scientific data was collected on 29 July and 15 December 1995, although the primary transmitter failed the following year. Soon after, on 31 March 1997, NASA officially declared the mission complete largely due to the costs associated with continuing communications sessions. Despite the decision, contact was established with the backup transmitter on 6 October 1997 as part of a training exercise for the Lunar Prospector spacecraft. By this point, the probe's solar arrays had deteriorated although the transmitter could still be turned on at perihelion when the solar flux was strong enough to provide sufficient power. On 8 December 2000, ground controllers established successful contact for 2 hours to commemorate the 35th year of operation. This, however, proved to be the very last contact made with the probe.

65

Luna 9

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Nation: USSR (40)

Objective(s): lunar soft-landing

Spacecraft: Ye-6M (no. 202)

Spacecraft Mass: 1,583.7 kg

Mission Design and Management: GSMZ imeni Lavochkina

Launch Vehicle: Molniya-M + Blok L (8K78M no. U103-32, also U15000-49)

Launch Date and Time: 31 January 1966 / 11:41:37 UT

Launch Site: NIIP-5 / Site 31/6

Scientific Instruments:

• 1. imaging system
• 2. gamma-ray spectrometer
• 3. KS-17M radiation detector

Results: With this mission, the Soviets accomplished another spectacular first in the space race, the first survivable landing of a human-made object on another celestial body and the transmission of photographs from its surface. Luna 9 was the twelfth attempt at a soft-landing by the Soviets; it was also the first deep space probe built by the Lavochkin design bureau that would design and build all future Soviet (and Russian) lunar and interplanetary spacecraft.

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A model of the Ye-6-type lunar lander (the ALS) shows its ingenious "petal" design. In scene I, we see the Luna spacecraft with (1) Automatic Lunar Station (ALS) which is covered by (3) a thermal covering. Ideally, at an altitude of 75 kilometers, the padding (2) around the ALS would be pressurized as we see in scene II. At a command from the radio-altimeter located at (4), two side packages (5) from the main bus are jettisoned and the main S5.5A retro engine is turned on. At a given altitude from the lunar surface, the pressurized ball (7) would be separated from the main bus and would impact on the surface as shown in scene III. The pressurized covering surrounding the ALS would then separate into two parts (8 and 9) revealing the inner ALS. As shown in scene V, the petals of the lander would then unfurl, stabilizing the main body of the ALS (14), allowing a small suite of scientific instruments to operate. These included antennae (12 and 15) and a camera (10). Credit: Nauka i zhizn

Ranger VII

Nation: USA (18)

Objective(s): lunar impact

Spacecraft: Ranger-B

Spacecraft Mass: 365.7 kg

Mission Design and Management: NASA / JPL

Launch Vehicle: Atlas Agena B (Atlas Agena no. 9 / Atlas D no. 250 / Agena B no. 6009)

Launch Date and Time: 28 July 1964 / 16:50:07 UT

Launch Site: Cape Kennedy / Launch Complex 12

Scientific Instruments:

• 1. imaging system (six TV cameras)

Results: Ranger VII, the second of the Block III Ranger series, was, after 13 consecutive failures, the first unequivocal success in U.S. efforts to explore the Moon. In some ways, it marked a major milestone in American deep space exploration as the ratio in favor of successes increased dramatically after this point. After a nominal mid-course correction on 29 July, Ranger VII approached the Moon precisely on target two days later. Just fifteen minutes prior to impact, the suite of TV cameras began sending back spectacular photos of the approaching surface to JPL's Goldstone antenna in California. The last of 4,316 images was transmitted only 2.3 seconds prior to impact at 13:25:49 UT on 31 July 1964. The impact point was at 10° 38′ S / 20° 36′ W on the northern rim of the Sea of Clouds. Scientists on the ground were more than satisfied with results; image resolution was, in many cases, one thousand times better than photos taken from Earth. Scientists concluded that an Apollo crewed landing would be possible in the mare regions of the lunar surface, given their relative smoothness.

47

Mariner III

Nation: USA (19)

Objective(s): Mars flyby

Spacecraft: Mariner-64C / Mariner-C

Spacecraft Mass: 260.8 kg

Mission Design and Management: NASA / JPL

Launch Vehicle: Atlas Agena D (Atlas Agena D no. 11 / Atlas D no. 289 / Agena D no. AD68/6931)

Launch Date and Time: 5 November 1964 / 19:22:05 UT

Launch Site: Cape Kennedy / Launch Complex 13

Scientific Instruments:

• 1. imaging system
• 2. cosmic dust detector
• 3. cosmic ray telescope
• 4. ionization chamber
• 5. helium magnetometer
• 6. trapped radiation detector
• 7. solar plasma probe

Results: NASA approved two probes for the Mariner Mars 1964 project in November 1962. The primary goal of the two spacecraft, code-named Mariner C, was to photograph the Martian surface using a single TV camera fixed on a scan platform that could return up to 22 frames after an eight-month journey. During the launch of Mariner III, the first of the two probes, the booster payload shroud failed to separate from the payload. Additionally, battery power spuriously dropped to zero (at T+8 hours 43 minutes) and the spacecraft's solar panels apparently never unfurled to replenish the power supply. Due to the incorrect mass of the spacecraft (since the payload shroud was still attached), it never entered a proper trans-Mars trajectory. The probe ended up in an unanticipated heliocentric orbit of 0.983 × 1.311 AU. A later investigation indicated that the shroud's inner fiberglass layer had separated from the shroud's outer skin, thus preventing jettisoning.