8 Soviet Space Rocket [Luna 1]
- Nation: USSR (4)
- Objective(s): lunar impact
- Spacecraft: Ye-1 (no. 4)
- Spacecraft Mass: 361.3 kg (including power sources installed on the upper stage)
- Mission Design and Management: OKB-1
- Launch Vehicle: 8K72 (no. B1-6)
- Launch Date and Time: 2 January 1959 / 16:41:21 UT
- Launch Site: NIIP-5 / Site 1/5
Scientific Instruments:
Ye-1:
- flux-gate magnetometer
- sodium-iodide scintillation counter
- 2 gas discharge Geiger counters
- 2 micrometeorite counters
- Cherenkov detector
- 4 ion traps
Blok Ye (upper stage):
- sodium vapor experiment
- scintillation counter
Results: Due to a ground error in an antenna that transmitted guidance information to the launch vehicle, the Blok Ye upper stage of the launch vehicle fired longer than intended—731.2 seconds—and thus, imparted 175 meters/second extra velocity to its payload. Because of this error, the Ye-1 probe missed the Moon. Nevertheless, the probe became the first human-made object to attain Earth escape velocity. The spacecraft (which with its entire launch vehicle was referred as "Soviet Space Rocket" in the Soviet press) eventually passed by the Moon at a distance of 6,400 kilometers about 34 hours following launch at 02:59 UT on January 4. (Some sources say the range was as high as 7,500 kilometers). Before the lunar encounter, at 00:57 UT on 3 January 1959 the attached upper stage released one kilogram of sodium at a distance of 113,000 kilometers from Earth which was photographed by Soviet ground-based astronomers although the quality of the images was poor, partly due to poor weather conditions. Ground controllers lost contact with the Soviet Space Rocket (retroactively named "Luna 1" in 1963) approximately 62 hours after launch due to loss of battery power when the payload was 597,000 kilometers from Earth, after which the probe became the first spacecraft to enter orbit around the Sun.
9 Pioneer IV
- Nation: USA (5)
- Objective(s): lunar flyby
- Spacecraft: Pioneer IV
- Spacecraft Mass: 6.08 kg
- Mission Design and Management: NASA / ABMA / JPL
- Launch Vehicle: Juno II (no. AM-14)
- Launch Date and Time: 3 March 1959 / 05:10:56 UT
- Launch Site: Cape Canaveral / Launch Complex 5
Scientific Instruments:
- photoelectric sensor trigger
- two Geiger-Mueller counters
Results: This was the last of 5 American lunar probes launched as part of a series during the International Geophysical Year (although the year officially ended a few months prior). Its design was very similar to Pioneer III; a key difference was the addition of a "monitor" to measure the voltage of the main radio transmitter, which had failed for unknown reasons on Pioneer III. A de-spin mechanism was on board to slow the spin-stabilized vehicle from its initial spin of 480 rpm down to about 11 rpm about 11 hours after launch. Although it did not achieve its primary objective to photograph the Moon during a flyby, Pioneer IV became the first U.S. spacecraft to reach Earth escape velocity. During the launch, the Sergeants on the second stage did not cut off on time, causing the azimuths and elevation angles of the trajectory to change. The spacecraft thus passed by the Moon at a range of about 60,000 kilometers (instead of the planned 32,000 kilometers), i.e., not close enough for the imaging scanner to function. Closest approach was at 10:24 UT on 4 March 1959, about 41 hours after launch. Its tiny radio transmitted information for 82 hours before contact was lost at a distance of 655,000 kilometers from Earth—the greatest tracking distance for a human-made object to date. The probe eventually entered heliocentric orbit becoming the first American spacecraft to do so. Scientists received excellent data that suggested that the intensity of the upper belt of the Van Allen belts had changed since Pioneer III (probably attributable to a recent solar flare) and that there might be a third belt at a higher altitude to the others.
Image
During the Pioneer IV mission, NASA tested a new space communications system. One component of the system was this 26-meter diameter antenna at Goldstone, California, the first of several antennas that would later constitute nodes in NASA's Deep Space Network. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
10 [Luna, Ye-1A no. 5]
- Nation: USSR (5)
- Objective(s): lunar impact
- Spacecraft: Ye-1A (no. 5)
- Spacecraft Mass: c. 390 kg (including power sources installed on the upper stage)
- Mission Design and Management: OKB-1
- Launch Vehicle: 8K72 (no. I1-7)
- Launch Date and Time: 18 June 1959 / 08:08 UT
- Launch Site: NIIP-5 / Site 1/5
Scientific Instruments:
Ye-1:
- flux-gate magnetometer
- sodium-iodide scintillation counter
- 2 micrometeorite counters
- Cherenkov detector
- 4 ion traps
- 6 Geiger counters
Blok Ye (upper stage):
- sodium vapor experiment
- Cherenkov detector
- 2 scintillation counters
Results: The Soviet Ye-1A probe, like the Ye-1, was designed for lunar impact. Engineers had incorporated some minor modifications to the scientific instruments (a modified antenna housing for the magnetometer, six instead of four gas discharge counters, and an improved piezoelectric detector) as a result of information received from the first Soviet Space Rocket (retroactively known as "Luna 1") and the American Pioneer IV. The launch was originally scheduled for 16 June but had to be postponed for two days due to the negligence of a young lieutenant who inadvertently permitted fueling of the upper stage with the wrong propellant. During the actual launch, one of the gyroscopes of the inertial guidance system failed at T+153 seconds, and the wayward booster was subsequently destroyed by command from the ground.
11 Second Soviet Space Rocket [Luna 2]
- Nation: USSR (6)
- Objective(s): lunar impact
- Spacecraft: Ye-1A (no. 7)
- Spacecraft Mass: 390.2 kg (including power sources installed on the upper stage)
- Mission Design and Management: OKB-1
- Launch Vehicle: 8K72 (no. I1-7b)
- Launch Date and Time: 12 September 1959 / 06:39:42 UT
- Launch Site: NIIP-5 / Site 1/5
Scientific Instruments:
Ye-1:
- flux-gate magnetometer
- sodium-iodide scintillation counter
- 2 micrometeorite counters
- Cherenkov detector
- 4 ion traps
- 6 Geiger counters
Blok Ye (upper stage):
- sodium vapor experiment
- Cherenkov detector
- scintillation counter
Results: After an aborted launch on 9 September, the Ye-1A probe successfully lifted off and reached Earth escape velocity. Officially named the "Second Soviet Space Rocket" by Pravda the day after launch, the spacecraft released its one kilogram of sodium at 18:42:42 UT on 12 September at a distance of 156,000 kilometers from Earth in a cloud that expanded out to 650 kilometers in diameter, clearly visible from the ground. This sixth attempt at lunar impact was much more accurate than its predecessors; the spacecraft successfully impacted the surface of the Moon at 21:02:23 UT on 14 September 1959, thus becoming the first object of human origin to make contact with another celestial body. The Blok Ye upper stage impacted about 30 minutes later, also at a velocity of just over 3 kilometers/second. The probe's impact point was approximately at 30° N / 0° longitude on the slope of the Autolycus crater, east of Mare Serenitatis. Luna 2 (as it was called after 1963) deposited Soviet emblems on the lunar surface carried in 9 × 15-centimeter sized metallic spheres. The spacecraft's magnetometer measured no significant lunar magnetic field as close as 55 kilometers to the lunar surface. The radiation detectors also found no hint of a radiation belt. These were the first measurements of physical fields for celestial bodies other than Earth. The ion traps on board Luna 2 made the first in situ measurements of the extended plasma envelope of Earth, suggesting the existence of what was later called the plasmapause.
12 Automatic Interplanetary Station [Luna 3]
- Nation: USSR (7)
- Objective(s): lunar flyby
- Spacecraft: Ye-2A (no. 1)
- Spacecraft Mass: 278.5 kg
- Mission Design and Management: OKB-1
- Launch Vehicle: 8K72 (no. I1-8)
- Launch Date and Time: 4 October 1959 / 00:43:40 UT
- Launch Site: NIIP-5 / Site 1/5
Scientific Instruments:
- photographic-TV imaging system
- 4 micrometeoroid counters
- 4 ion traps
- Cherenkov radiation detector
- sodium iodide scintillation counter
- 3 gas discharge counters
Image
This is a processed version of one of the exposures from the Luna 3 mission. Credit: Don Mitchell
A model of the Ye-2A class spacecraft, later known as Luna-3, on display at the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow. Credit: https://bit.ly/2wPp8AI
Results: This spacecraft, of the Ye-2A class, was the first Soviet probe designed to take pictures of the farside of the Moon using the Yenisey unit (using the AFA-Ye1 camera), which consisted of two lenses of 200 mm (wide angle) and 500 mm (high resolution) focal lengths, and a capacity to read up to 40 images on a 35 mm film roll. The dual lenses exposed adjacent frames simultaneously. It was also the first spacecraft to be fully powered by solar panels. Strictly speaking, the probe was not meant to reach Earth escape velocity; instead, the launch vehicle inserted the spacecraft, called the Automatic Interplanetary Station (Avtomaticheskaya mezhplanetnaya stantsiya, AMS) in the Soviet press, into a highly-elliptical orbit around Earth at 48,280 × 468,300 kilometers, sufficient to reach lunar distance. During the coast to the Moon, the AMS suffered overheating problems and poor communications, but the vehicle eventually passed over the Moon's southern polar cap at a range of 7,900 kilometers at 14:16 UT on 6 October before climbing up (northward) over the Earth-Moon plane. At a distance of 65,200 kilometers from the Moon at 03:30 UT on 7 October, having been properly oriented by its Chayka attitude control system (the first successful 3-axis stabilization used on a spacecraft), the twin-lens 35 mm camera began taking the first of 29 pictures of the farside of the Moon. This session lasted a total of about 40 minutes, by the end of which the spacecraft was 68,400 kilometers from the lunar surface. The exposed film was then developed, fixed, and dried automatically, following which a special light-beam of up to 1,000 lines per image scanned the film for transmission to Earth. Images were received the next day (after a few aborted attempts) at two locations, a primary at Simeiz in Crimea known as IP-41Ye and a backup in the Soviet far east, at Yelizovo in Kamchatka, known as NIP-6. On the ground, there were two systems for recording the images from AMS, Yenisey I (fast mode, at 50 lines/second) and Yenisey II (at slow mode at 0.8 lines/second). Seventeen of the images were of usable quality, and for the first time, they showed parts of the Moon never before seen by human eyes. The trajectory of AMS was specifically designed so that images would show at least half of the Moon, one-third of which was on the near side, so as to provide a point of reference for evaluating formations on the farside. Controllers were unable to regain contact with the spacecraft after the spacecraft entered and then exited Earth's shadow. Luna 3 circled Earth at least 11 times and probably reentered sometime in early 1960. Post-Cold War revelations confirmed that the film type used on AMS, known as "ASh" by the Soviets, was actually unexposed film that was repurposed from a CIA reconnaissance balloon (from Project Genetrix) that had drifted into Soviet territory in the late 1950s. This film had been stored at the A. F. Mozhayskiy Military Academy in Leningrad when the space camera manufacturers at the VNII-380 institute had stumbled upon it. Further investigation showed that the temperature-resistant and radiation-hardened film would be perfect for the AFA-Ye1 camera, and the rest was history. The spacecraft, named Luna 3 after 1963, photographed about 70% of the farside and found fewer mare areas on the farside, prompting scientists to revise their theories of lunar evolution.