Soviet Luna Missions Options

[PhilHorzempa]

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I thought that it was time to start up a discussion of what we know, or
would like to know, about the Soviet Luna Missions.

To start off, I have heard many a reference to the landing system utilized
by the early landers, such as Luna 9. However, I have yet to find a report,
or even a diagram, that shows the sequence of events, or such details as
the air bags. If such references do not exist, I hope that some of the UMSF
community have Russian contacts that could lead us to the source material
before it ends up in the dust bin of history.

In addition, I heard of an effort several years ago to obtain ALL of the imagery
from Lunakhods 1 and 2. Does anyone know if that effort was able to
secure that data?

Also, as far as Lunas 15, 18 and 23, the sample-return missions that didn't
quite make it home, are there any official reports "out there" that detail what
actually occurred to those missions? Or will we have to wait for the
high-resolution images from the LRO to determine their fates?


Another Phil

[4th rock from th...]

Finally I've finished one of my projects: merging various Luna 3 images to reduce noise, cover all of the moon's disk and replace missing data areas.

This is my final result and not that bad in my opinion ;-)
Much of the image resolution was lost in the noise, but the picture's dynamic range was recovered.

[tedstryk]

Finally I've finished one of my projects: merging various Luna 3 images to reduce noise, cover all of the moon's disk and replace missing data areas.

This is my final result and not that bad in my opinion ;-)
Much of the image resolution was lost in the noise, but the picture's dynamic range was recovered.

Nice work! I had never thought of doing that!

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

Very cool. Where did you find a good picture of frame 35?

I'm still trying to pry more Luna-3 pictures loose. To be honest, they are probably sitting in a drawer, scratched up, covered with dust. But I'm told the magnetic tape still exists, and there is a machine at IKI that can read it. I'm pressing some folks to do that.


I made this figure for my book, just to give people a reference for what they are looking at in the Luna-3 images. The clementine image is a texture-mapped sphere.

[attachment=5474:attachment]

So I guess this means the American Anti-Communist League was wrong. The Russians didn't fake the pictures.

[4th rock from th...]

Very cool. Where did you find a good picture of frame 35?

Hum... I didn't !!!! I just used the clean parts from several frames to create the mosaic.

Here's what you get using the odd number frames. Photoshop does help here ;-)

You've done a magnificient job with that image, any plans to do the same thing with the Zond 3 far-side photos?

I'm at (slow) work with those, but it's complicated because of spacecraft motion. Some kind of image projection will be needed to create a full mosaic.

So far, I've got this :-) from frames 3, 5 and 7:

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

Hum... I didn't !!!! I just used the clean parts from several frames to create the mosaic.

Oh wait, my mistake. I was thinking you used frame 32 for some reason.

I would love to get the signal off the Luna-3 tapes. They reprocessed some of them in 1965, and those images display considerably better quality.

[attachment=5504:attachment] [attachment=5505:attachment]

[4th rock from th...]

Oh wait, my mistake. I was thinking you used frame 32 for some reason.

I would love to get the signal off the Luna-3 tapes. They reprocessed some of them in 1965, and those images display considerably better quality.

Yes, that would be great. There is software that decodes fax images using a PC's soundboard. I've tired it on HF Fax transmissions, using a SW radio connected to the PC and it works.

So it would be as "simple" as converting the Luna 3 tapes to MP3 format. My guess is that the image information uses "regular sound" frequencies, so a simple convertion to MP3 would do.

[RJG]

So it would be as "simple" as converting the Luna 3 tapes to MP3 format. My guess is that the image information uses "regular sound" frequencies, so a simple convertion to MP3 would do.

Be careful!

MP3 is a lossy compression technique using various methods to determine what to loose -including psychoacoustics. Obviously, if the audio signal is to be demodulated as a visual image, these losses may well manifest themselves as visible artifacts.

You would be better to convert to WAV which doesn't involve compression. Still easy to do but without leading to imperfections in the final image.

Rob

[4th rock from th...]

MP3 is a lossy compression technique using various methods to determine what to loose -including psychoacoustics.

Yes, that is true, but I was just thinking of a quick way to share such data (given that it even exists) and to try to decode it. Anyway, given the limited amount of information in such a transmission, I don't think that MP3 would degrade it much.

Anyway, some links with some info on HF-Fax that might be interesting at least to understand the basics of analog image transmission, as used on the Luna images.

http://www.hffax.de/html/live_charts.html
http://www.hffax.de/html/hf-fax.html

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

Yes, that is true, but I was just thinking of a quick way to share such data (given that it even exists) and to try to decode it. Anyway, given the limited amount of information in such a transmission, I don't think that MP3 would degrade it much.

Anyway, some links with some info on HF-Fax that might be interesting at least to understand the basics of analog image transmission, as used on the Luna images.

http://www.hffax.de/html/live_charts.html
http://www.hffax.de/html/hf-fax.html

Luna-3 images were FM video on a 25 kHz subcarrier. I think you'd want to get uncompressed WAV format, and then party on that with some good digital filters, like a high quality FM demodulator to start with.