34 Mars 1
- Nation: USSR (18)
- Objective(s): Mars flyby
- Spacecraft: 2MV-4 (no. 4 or no. 1)
- Spacecraft Mass: 893.5 kilograms
- Mission Design and Management: OKB-1
- Launch Vehicle: Molniya + Blok L (8K78 no. T103-16)
- Launch Date and Time: 1 November 1962 / 16:14:06 UT
- Launch Site: NIIP-5 / Site 1/5
A mostly accurate model of the Mars 1 spacecraft (of the 2MV-4 type) shown here at the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow. The main course correction engine, known as S5.19, can be seen on left. Credit: Asif Siddiqi
Scientific Instruments:
- magnetometer
- 2 scintillation counters
- 2 gas discharge Geiger counters
- Cherenkov counter
- 2 ion traps
- infrared spectrometer
- micrometeoroid sensor
- imaging system
- ultraviolet spectrograph
Results: The second of three Soviet spacecraft intended for the 1962 Mars launch period, Mars 1 was the first spacecraft sent by any nation to fly past Mars. Its primary mission was to photograph the surface during a flyby from a range of between 1,000 to 11,000 kilometers. In comparison to its predecessor, the probe had a slightly different main engine (the S5.19) than the Venus probes, with a reduced propellant tank mass. The camera system, weighing 32 kilograms, included both 35 and 750 mm lenses and used 70 mm film. It could take up to 112 frames, stored on film and then to be scanned for playback to Earth. After successful insertion into Earth orbit, the Blok L upper stage successfully fired the probe towards Mars, but immediately after engine cutoff, controllers discovered that pressure in one of the nitrogen gas bottles for the spacecraft's attitude control system dropped to zero (due to incomplete closure of a valve). Before all the compressed nitrogen was lost, on 6–7 November, controllers were able to spin the vehicle around the axis perpendicular to the plane of the solar panels to enable a backup gyroscope system to keep the solar panels constantly exposed to the Sun during the coast phase. Further mid-course corrections, however, proved impossible. Controllers maintained contact with the vehicle until 21 March 1963 when the probe was 106 million kilometers from Earth. According to TASS (on 16 May), because of the failure of orientation, "the direction of the station's antennas toward Earth was upset." This anomaly prevented further radio contact after 21 March. Mars 1 silently flew by Mars at a distance of 197,000 kilometers on 19 June 1963. Prior to loss of contact, scientists were able to collect data on interplanetary space (on cosmic ray intensity, Earth's magnetic fields, ionized gases from the Sun, and meteoroid impact densities) up to a distance of 1.24 AUs. The data from Mars 1 (from 20 November 1962 to 25 January 1963) showed that once past 0.24 AUs, i.e., Earth's radiation belts, the intensity of cosmic radiation was virtually constant.
35 [Mars, 2MV-3 no. 1]
- Nation: USSR (19)
- Objective(s): Mars impact
- Spacecraft: 2MV-3 (no. 1)
- Spacecraft Mass: [unknown]
- Mission Design and Management: OKB-1
- Launch Vehicle: Molniya + Blok L (8K78 no. T103-17)
- Launch Date and Time: 4 November 1962 / 15:35:14 UT
- Launch Site: NIIP-5 / Site 1/5
Scientific Instruments:
Spacecraft Bus:
- magnetometer
- scintillation counter
- gas discharge Geiger counters
- Cherenkov detector
- ion traps
- cosmic wave detector
- micrometeoroid detector
Impact Probe:
- temperature, pressure, and density sensors
- chemical gas analyzer
- gamma-ray detector
- Mercury level movement detector
Results: This was the third and last of the Soviet "second generation" Mars attempts in 1962 and also the only impact lander in the series. During the trans-Mars injection firing of the Blok L upper stage, the main engine (the S1.5400A1) prematurely shut down after 33 seconds due to a malfunction in the programmed timer for the stage. The problem was later traced to excessive vibrations of the second stage during liftoff. These vibrations also jarred loose a pyrotechnic igniter from its support, preventing the Blok L from firing. The spacecraft remained stranded in Earth orbit and reentered the atmosphere on 5 November. The probe had been intended to fly by Mars on 21 June 1963.
36 [Luna, Ye-6 no. 2]
- Nation: USSR (20)
- Objective(s): lunar soft-landing
- Spacecraft: Ye-6 (no. 2)
- Spacecraft Mass: 1,420 kg
- Mission Design and Management: OKB-1
- Launch Vehicle: Molniya + Blok L (8K78 no. T103-09)
- Launch Date and Time: 4 January 1963 / 08:48:58 UT
- Launch Site: NIIP-5 / Site 1/5
Scientific Instruments:
- imaging system
- gas-discharge counter
Results: This spacecraft was the first "second generation" Soviet lunar probe (known as Ye-6), designed to accomplish a survivable landing on the surface of the Moon. The Ye-6 probes were equipped with simple 100-kilogram lander capsules (called the Automatic Lunar Station or Avtomaticheskaya lunnaya stantsiya, ALS) whose primary objective was to send back photographs from the lunar surface. Each egg-shaped ALS was installed on a roughly cylindrical-shaped main bus. Like the Mars and Venera deep space probes, the Ye-6 Luna spacecraft were also launched by the four-stage 8K78 (Molniya) booster but modified for lunar missions. This first Ye-6 probe was designed to cruise for about three days before landing on the Moon on 7 January at 19:55:10 UT. Like many of its deep space predecessors, the probe failed to escape Earth orbit because of a failure in the Blok L trans-lunar injection stage. There was apparently a failure in a current converter in the power system of the I-100 instrument container (which controlled both the Blok L and the spacecraft), which as a result, failed to issue a command to fire the Blok L engine. The spacecraft remained in Earth orbit, unacknowledged by the Soviets until 11 January 1963.
37 [Luna, Ye-6 no. 3]
- Nation: USSR (21)
- Objective(s): lunar soft-landing
- Spacecraft: Ye-6 (no. 3)
- Spacecraft Mass: 1,420 kg
- Mission Design and Management: OKB-1
- Launch Vehicle: Molniya + Blok L (8K78 no. T103-10)
- Launch Date and Time: 3 February 1963 / 09:29:14 UT
- Launch Site: NIIP-5 / Site 1/5
Scientific Instruments:
- imaging system
- gas-discharge counter
Results: This was the second Soviet attempt to accomplish a soft-landing on the Moon (planned for 20:34:04 UT on 6 February). This time, the spacecraft failed to reach Earth orbit. After launch, at around T+105.5 seconds, the rocket began to lose attitude control along the pitch axis, which spread to the yaw axis after separation from the core booster. The third and fourth stages (along with payload) traced an arc and reentered over the Pacific Ocean near Midway Island. Later investigation indicated that the I-100 control system provided incorrect information to the booster's trajectory control system.
38 Luna 4
- Nation: USSR (22)
- Objective(s): lunar soft-landing
- Spacecraft: Ye-6 (no. 4)
- Spacecraft Mass: 1,422 kilograms
- Mission Design and Management: OKB-1
- Launch Vehicle: Molniya + Blok L (8K78 no. T103-11)
- Launch Date and Time: 2 April 1963 / 08:16:38 UT
- Launch Site: NIIP-5 / Site 1/5
Scientific Instruments:
- imaging system
- gas-discharge counter
Results: The third Soviet attempt to perform a lunar soft-landing (planned for 19:42:37 UT on 5 April) was the first in which the spacecraft actually left Earth orbit. During the coast to the Moon, the spacecraft's Yupiter-M astronavigation system suffered a major failure (probably related to its thermal control system) and left the probe in an incorrect attitude. As a result, Luna 4 was unable to perform its planned mid-course correction. Although communications were maintained with the spacecraft, it passed by the Moon at a range of 8,500 kilometers at 01:24 UT on 6 April and eventually entered heliocentric orbit from its intermediate barycentric orbit. Data from the gas-discharge counter was compared with data from Mars 1 to provide further clarification to a radiation map of Earth up to lunar distance. The data showed that the intensity of cosmic radiation remained "virtually constant" up to 0.24 AU from the Earth.
39 Kosmos 21 [Zond]
- Nation: USSR (23)
- Objective(s): deep space and return to Earth
- Spacecraft: 3MV-1A (no. 2, also no. 1)
- Spacecraft Mass: c. 800 kg
- Mission Design and Management: OKB-1
- Launch Vehicle: Molniya + Blok L (8K78 no. G103-18, also G15000-17)
- Launch Date and Time: 11 November 1963 / 06:23:34 UT
- Launch Site: NIIP-5 / Site 1/5
Scientific Instruments:
Spacecraft Bus:
- radiation detector
- charged particle detector
- magnetometer
- piezoelectric detector
- LA-2 atomic hydrogen detector
- Kassiopeya radio telescope
- RSK-2M ultraviolet and Roentgen solar radiation experiment
- VIKT-2 vapor friction technology experiment
- plasma engines
Results: This was the first of the Soviet Union's "third generation" deep space planetary probes of the 3MV series. Like the second generation, Soviet engineers planned four types of the 3MV, the 3MV-1 (for Venus impact), 3MV-2 (for Venus flyby), 3MV-3 (for Mars impact), and 3MV-4 (for Mars flyby). The primary difference over the second generation was vastly improved (and in many cases doubled) orientation system elements as well as improved on board propulsion systems. While these four versions were meant to study Mars and Venus, the Soviets conceived of two additional variants of the series, similar but not identical to the 3MV-1 and 3MV-4 versions, with the designations 3MV-1A and 3MV-4A. These "Object-Probes" (ob'yekt-zond) were designed to verify key technological systems during simpler missions into deep space and back to Earth. A government decree on March 21, 1963 had approved two to three such "object-probe" missions, one of which (a 3MV-1A) was designed to depart from Earth's ecliptic (the orbital plane of Earth around the Sun) out to 12–16 million kilometers from Earth and then return back to Earth after about six months when its orbit intersected with that of Earth again, aided by two mid-course corrections using its S5.45 main engine. The latter, capable of two firings, was a lighter version of that used on the 2MV model with higher specific impulse and a longer burn time. During this mission, the third and fourth stages separated abnormally, and after reaching Earth orbit, ground control lost telemetry (at about 06:45:44 UT) from the Blok L upper stage designed to send the vehicle past the Moon. As a result, the spacecraft remained stranded in Earth orbit. The stage's main engine turbopump probably exploded upon ignition destroying the spacecraft. With this mission, the Soviets began the practice of giving "Kosmos" designations to obscure the failure of lunar and planetary probes that remained stranded in Earth orbit. If the spacecraft had successfully departed from Earth orbit, it would probably have been called "Zond 1."
40 Ranger VI
- Nation: USA (17)
- Objective(s): lunar impact
- Spacecraft: P-53 / Ranger-A
- Spacecraft Mass: 364.69 kg
- Mission Design and Management: NASA / JPL
- Launch Vehicle: Atlas Agena B (Atlas Agena B no. 8 / Atlas D no. 199 / Agena B no. 6008)
- Launch Date and Time: 30 January 1964 / 15:49:09 UT
- Launch Site: Cape Kennedy / Launch Complex 12
Scientific Instruments:
- imaging system (six TV cameras)
Results: This fourth American attempt to lunar impact was the closest success so far. The spacecraft, the first Block III type vehicle with a suite of six TV cameras, was sterilized to avoid contaminating the lunar surface. The series would also serve as a testbed for future interplanetary spacecraft by deploying systems (such as solar panels) that could be used for more ambitious missions. The Block III spacecraft carried a 173-kilogram TV unit (replacing the impact capsule carried on the Block II Ranger spacecraft). The six cameras included two full-scan and four partial-scan cameras, capable of shooting 300 pictures a minute. Ranger VI flew to the Moon successfully and impacted precisely on schedule at 09:24:32 UT on 2 February. Unfortunately, the power supply for the TV camera package had short-circuited during Atlas booster separation three days previously and left the system inoperable. The cameras were to have transmitted high-resolution photos of the lunar approach from 1,448 kilometers to 6.4 kilometers range in support of Project Apollo. Impact coordinates were 9° 24′ N / 21° 30′ E.