UMSF space history photo of the month Options

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Maybe we could make this a monthly item, in which we could look back at the history of Unmanned Space missions.
For January 2008 I've chosen an image showing the coverage of the Sun by early Pioneer 5-8 spacecraft.
Pioneer 5 to 8, or Pioneer V to VIII using the system of Roman numerals in vogue during the early 1960s for spacecraft designations, were directed towards the Sun along the earth's orbit to monitor solar activity. Pioneer V was launched on 11th March 1960 and provided the very first space weather report 4 to 8 hours before a solar storm hit the Earth.
Some of this Pioneer quartet, Pioneer 6-7-8 even provided updates on our Sun's activity during the early Apollo Moon landings in order to check the damaging potential of solar flares to affect the astronauts.

[edstrick]

There used to be a distinction between hard and soft landing and it's certainly valid. A "hard lander" is one that does a controlled crash landing and survives. Even at low speed, like the Venera 7 and 8 landing spheres. A "Soft lander" is one that does not need all-sides protection during landing.. it lands on footpads, like Surveyors, Apollo, Viking, Venera 9 through Vega 2, Hayabusa, NEAR, Huygens, and Phoenix. It's more than just a "landing you can walk away from". Not trivial.

Luna 9 was the first successful landing on the moon. It got the real prize for being first. Surveyor 1 was the first soft landing, a technical quibble, but not a trivial one.